44 GUIDE TO ICELAND. is approached, the two rivers named each falling nearly a thousand feet in a few miles. Geologists assign many changes of the earth’s surface, a number of rock formations, and a long duration to what they term the tertiary period, and bring it to a close with the glacial epoch. This epoch was one of great disturbance of the earth’s crust from other causes than the action of the ice, subsidences and upheavals to the extent of 1,800 to 2,000 feet taking place over the whole of the northern hemisphere from the fortieth or forty-second parallel northward. The basaltic plateaux in existence at this time were greatly disturbed, immense tracts subsiding to such an extent that they are now beneath the sea; while in places fragments of considerable height were left standing hundreds of miles apart. The fragments left standing in that part of the northern hemisphere where we now find Iceland, doubtless at the beginning of the post-tertiary period, formed a group of islands very similar in appearance to the Faroes of to-day, but scattered over a greater area. To judge by the existing coastal formation of Iceland, these islands subsequent to the glacial epoch were detached by the arms of a vast glacier occupying the space now the interior of the island, which stretch- ing seaward through rifts in and the gaps between the mountain masses, deepened and widened them into the fjord inlets of this remarkably indented island. Amidst the scatter of mountainous isles left standing, existed a vast volcanic outlet that has remained active until this very hour ; belching forth its fiery floods of molten rock to be deposited in the form of conglomerates and tuffs when they issued subaqueously or subglacially, and later on, subaerially, in the form of the vast sheets of lava composing the more super- ficial strata of the inland plateau. Not only in the large space inclosed by the fragments of the older plateau was the molten rock so deposited, but coursing between the rifts and gaps a certain quantity was left behind, the sea and ice thereby being gradually ousted, and the detached masses connected by lower lying tracts into one island, with an exceedingly irregular coastal outline, and thus was the foundation laid of the Iceland of to-day. There is reason to believe that the sea-level over the northern hemisphere varied considerably towards the close of the glacial epoch, and likewise during the early ages of the post-tertiary period, at times being far higher than at others. This would account for the tuff-strata found alternating with the lava ; as it is not very speculative to imagine that those portions of Iceland,

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