INTRODUCTION. 11 which define the PjorSs; and in the immense vista of silvery cupolas, “cravatted” cones, and snow-capped mulls, which blend and melt with ravishing reflections of etherial pink, blue, azure, and lilac, into the grey and neutral tints of the horizon.’ The tour to ^pmgvellir, the 6 eg sir, and Hekla is the one usually made by tourists visiting the island for the first time, as it em- braces the sight de rigeur, which must be seen, otherwise upon one’s return he will be told by his friends he hasn’t seen the chief sights ; but these by no means exhaust the ‘ lions ’ of Iceland; nor is Hekla the only volcano on the island, as is generally believed; for upwards of twenty volcanic vents have been witnessed in active eruption during historical times, and no less than eighty-nine eruptions are recorded! The most important and interesting volcano in the island is Asiya (Basket), a vast, almost circular crater between seventeen and eighteen miles in circumference, lying amidst the great central lava-desert, the O'duftahraun (Misdeed-lava), which covers an area of 1,200 square miles. This volcano erupted as recently as 1875, when an explosion took place that disrupted a mass of the lava deposits in the crater five miles in circumference, and of unknown but immense thickness, which sunk into the bowels of the mountain to a depth of over 700 feet! The concussion was so great that it caused an earthquake felt over the whole island, but most severely in the north-east, where rifts of immense depth, and over twenty miles in length, were torn in the rocky strata forming that part of the island. The greatest disturbance, at a distance from the volcano, occurred in a desert region known as the Mijvatns Orceji (Midge-lake Desert), and here from a vast fissure molten lava welled forth nearly continuously for over four months after the earthquake. The fissure commences at a spot distant thirty miles from the subsidence in Askja, and extends in a north-north-easterly direction for over twenty miles. It is evident from the nature of the eruption at the two places that this flood of molten rock came through a subterraneous channel from Askja, for here prodigious quantities of pumice and volcanic-ash were ejected, but it is believed no lava. According to Professor Johnstrup, over 3,000 square miles of country east of the volcano were buried to a depth varying from several feet in the vicinity of the crater to two inches near the coast. Ash during the eruption was wafted across the North Sea and scattered over the Scandinavian peninsula as far inland as the central districts of Sweden; and the column of fire from Askja, after the explosion, was so high and brilliant

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