ROUTE II.—THROUGH ‘ THE NJAL COUNTRY.’ 119 From p6rsm0rk the route will lie over the Malifellssandr (Measure-fell-sand), north of the Merlcr Jokull, and thence hy a track known as the south Fjallabaksvegr, passing through wild scenery, to A'sar parsonage. The time taken to accomplish this day’s journey will in a great measure depend upon the state of the tributary streams draining the glaciers. The traveller will probably he in the saddle at ieast ten hours. Eleventh Day.—At A'sar. The ponies will need a day’s rest after the fatigues of yesterday’s journey, and the travellers, doubt- less, will also find one welcome. A’sar is situated on the western border of the vast floods of lava that burst forth in the vicinity of the Skaptar Jokull in 1783, and is a capital base for their ex- ploration ; it is also the best place from which to make an assault upon the hitherto, it is believed, unvisited Kotlugja. crater amidst the glaciers of the Myrdals Jokull. Twelfth Day.—Kotlugja {Kotlu, genitive of Katla = Kettle ; gjd = rift). An attempt should be made to visit this volcano ; about which little is known save its dread doings. In Zurcher and Margolle’s work on Yolcanoes we find: ‘The crater of Kot- lugja is an immense fissure which crosses the mountain, split in two during an eruption.’ This huge volcanic outlet is situated in the eastern part of the Jokull; and is credited with thirteen eruptions, the last in 1860. The first was in a.d. 894, when a vast extent of country was laid waste. The ninth, in 1660, was of an extraordinary nature. Such was the quantity of sand, stones, and debris borne down hy the flood from the melting glaciers on the heated mountain, ‘that a dry beach was formed where formerly people fished in a depth of 20 fathoms; the coast was extended 1,000 fathoms out into the sea, and five or six farm- steads were destroyed.’ As the author observed in the Geological Account of Iceland, it would not take many centuries, with one such eruption in every decade, to unite a widely-scattered group of islets into one island! The tenth eruption, in 1721, was a very violent one: ‘ It began on May 11th with excessive floods and glacier-slips; the ice-blocks grounded in a depth of from 70 to 80 fathoms three (Danish= 13 J- English) miles out at sea. A grass-grown neck of land was swept away, and in its stead was left a polished slab of rock 6,750 square fathoms in extent. The ashes were borne westward, and fell so thick the first day that at homesteads 25 (Danish =110 English) geographical miles distant from the crater the light was obscured to such an extent as to make reading of print impossible’ (Thoroddsen). In 1755 the eleventh recorded

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