Jatter from below, and all these, fitted in all respects to produce the effect that we see above ground; but if it be asked where the fire is, that produces all the steam and the boiling water, no one will be hardy enough to assign a local habitation to that element which Sir Humphry Davy has called "an unceasing fire in the laboratory of nature," that first operative cause which heaves up mountains-compels them to vomit forth red hot melted lava,-rends open deep chasms in the surface of the earth, and supplies the fountains of the geysers with boiling water and steam,'-pp. 204, 205.

Mr. Barrow next visted the little port of Havnefiord, the approach to which is over a plain strewed with huge blocks of lava, ten, fifteen, or twenty feet high, forming a complete labyrinth. These bore evident marks of having once been wholly or partially in a state of fusion, being cellular and blistered in every part, and apparently upheaved out of the ground on the very spot they occupied. Not a hill was to be seen in the neighbourhood, but the plain exhibited a wavy surface of rocky ridges. Mr. Barrow adds the following note from the MS. Journal of a highly accomplished traveller of earlier date, who kindly favoured him with the use of it:

"To eyes unused to the sight," says Dr. Holland, "nothing can be conceived, more singular than the aspect of this bed of lava. A vast confused mass of rocky matter, having a general elevation of level above the surrounding country, but thrown within itself into every possible variety of strange and abrupt shapes, is the general appearance presented to the sight. In following a narrow and rugged path across the lava, we observed numerous fissures, caverns, and hollows, some of them apparently the effect of cracking and sinking down of masses of rock, others much resembling craters from which the melted matter had flowed. The approach to Havnefiord is striking: high and rugged masses of lava concealed from us, until we were almost at the edge it, a small and retired bay, at the upper extremity of which are situated fifteen or twenty habitations constructed, like those at Reikiavik, of timber, but superior in general appearance to the houses of the latter place. This is Havnefiord."-p. 222.

Our author next proceeds to Bessestad, at no great distance from Havnefiord, where he found a school for the education chiefly of young men destined for the church; the only school, he believes, of any kind in the whole island. It was vacation time, and the students had dispersed. The manner in which they are huddled together, two in a bed, in a kind of Augean stable, is not calculated to raise one's ideas of this collegiate institution. Mr. Barrow describes their sleeping-room as resembling a menagerie, with stalls or cells on either side, and was not a little shocked at the miserable and filthy state in which everything appeared.

The

The number of scholars is forty. There are three masters; one, styled Professor of Theology, teaches also both Greek and Hebrew; another, called Lecturer, has for his share Latin, history, mathematics, and arithmetic; the third undertakes the Danish, the German, and the Icelandic. The funds appropriated for the school are said to be sufficient to pay the teachers, and to afford board, books, and clothing to the scholars gratis

It may be mentioned, to the credit of Bessestad College, that some of the best and most learned works in Iceland have issued from thence, and that five volumes in Danish and Latin have just been completed and published by "The Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen," under the title of "Scripta Historica Islandorum de Rebus gestis veterum Borealium," the work of S. Egilssen, Lecturer of the Collegiate School at Bessestad. It contains historical sagas relating to events that occurred out of Iceland, and more particularly to the exploits of the Danes in England from the middle of the tenth to the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, an obscure period in English history. From a glance at this work, I should think Mr, Sharon Turner would find in it much new and interesting matter for his Anglo-Saxon History.'-p. 231.

But schools in Iceland are of less importance, as domestic education is the almost universal practice. Even the poorest pea santry, amidst every want of what we should consider comfort, are more enlightened than those of other countries, and apparently more happy and contented. Dr. Holland observes—

The summer's sun saw them, indeed, laboriously occupied in seeking their provision from the stormy ocean and a barren soil, but the long seclusion of the winter gave them the leisure, as well as the desire, to cultivate talents which were at once so fruitful in occupation and delight. During the darkness of their year, and beneath the rude covering of wood and turf, they recited to the assembled families the deeds and descent of their forefathers, from whom they had received that inheritance of liberty which they now dwelt among deserts to preserve.'-pp. 237, 238.

This is worthy the spirit of a Cincinnatus. Mr. Barrow ob serves that

The authority given to the clergy, by law, not to marry a woman unless she can read and write, would appear to be an admirable one, and will explain why the peasantry of Iceland are so much better informed than those of any other nation of Europe. It is from the mother that the child learns the first rudiments of education, and receives a taste for reading; and a well-educated mother cannot fail to instil into her young offspring the principles of religion and morality. I am informed by Mr. Broder Knudtzon, that the clergy of Norway have the same authority to refuse confirmation to those who cannot read and write, as well as answer certain questions regarding reli gion.'-p. 284.

The

The meritorious parish priests of Iceland would not, we presume, be considered even by Mr. Joseph Hume, as possessing much surplus wealth. Our author states that

The clergy almost universally submit to every species of drudgery: their incomes are too small to allow them to hire and feed labourers, and nothing is more common than to find the parish priest in a coarse woollen jacket and trowsers, or skin boots, digging peat, mowing grass, and assisting in all the operations of hay-making. They are all blacksmiths also from necessity, and the best shoers of horses on the island. The feet of an Iceland horse would be cut to pieces over the sharp rock and lava, if not well shod. The great resort of the peasantry is the church, and should any of the numerous horses have lost a shoe, or be likely to do so, the priest puts on his apron, lights his little charcoal fire in the smithy, (one of which is attached to every parsonage,) and sets the animal on his legs again; and here again he has a laborious task to perform in procuring his charcoal. Whatever the distance may be to the nearest thicket of dwarf-birch, he must go thither to burn the wood, and to bring it home when charred, across his horse's back.'-p. 238.

And yet from these labours they can turn with pleasure to their literary pursuits. One of these worthy pastors, Thorlakson, was completing when Henderson paid him a visit some twenty years ago-a translation of the Paradise Lost' into his native tongue, having already finished Pope's Essay on Man.' Three of the first books of his Paradise Lost' were printed by the Icelandic Literary Society, but, owing to the want of funds and the dissolution of that society, the work was then stopped. Henderson thus describes his visit to the venerable man

'Like most of his brethren, at this season of the year, we found him in the meadow assisting his people in hay-making. On hearing of our arrival, he made all the haste home which his age and infirmity would allow, and bidding us welcome to his lowly abode, he ushered us into his humble apartment, where he translated my countrymen into Icelandic.

The door is not quite four feet in height, and the room may be about eight feet in length by six in breadth. At the inner end is the poet's bed, and close to the door, over against a small window not exceeding two feet square, is a table where he commits to paper the effusions of his muse.'

The Literary Fund Society of London, whose merits are so well known, afforded a seasonable relief to this northern bard, and received from him in return a letter of gratitude in, as is said, very elegant Latin.

Mr. Barrow was very unlucky in his visit to Stappen, a spot as remarkable as its namesake, our own Staffa, for its huge basaltic caves and columns. The first untoward circumstance was the

discovery,

discovery, on approaching the bay, that their pilot had previously visited that part of the island but once, and that visit was by land -then, with the rapidity of shifting a scene in a pantomime, the sky became shrouded in dense clouds, the atmosphere thick with mist, the rain fell, and the wind blew, and our heroes were compelled to flee from the approach to the shore which contained these basaltic caverns.

In their voyage back to Reikiavik the sea was so high that the yacht dipped her jib-boom under water with a force which snapped it asunder, its height, when the vessel was on an even heel or in still water, being reckoned as not less than thirty feet from the surface. The oldest seaman in the vessel was sea-sick, and remarked in a half angry tone, that he had been upwards of twelve years in the king's service, and had never before been troubled with such a complaint a complaint, however, to which Nelson himself was subject even to the close of his arduous life.

This failure was a grievous disappointment to our young author, who appears to have been most anxious, after seeing the Geysers, to visit the volcanic mountain and extraordinary caverns of Stappen. With a becoming modesty he observes—

But though I had to sustain a great and mortifying disappointment in being obliged to desist from any further attempt to land, the extreme kindness and liberality of Sir John Stanley, since my return, have, in so far as valuable information and correct description go, more than compensated any personal gratification that I might have received, and enabled me to give a much better account of this place than I could hope to have acquired by any exertion of my own.'-p. 259,

The whole account of Sir John Stanley's visit to Stappen, and his ascent, with his companions, of the Snaefell Yokul, which seems to be a much more remarkable feature than even Hecla, is highly interesting, and we are only sorry that we have not space to dwell longer on it. The narrative will be read with interest, and the more so as no description of this adventurous ascent had before appeared in print. Mr. Barrow himself says,

'I am not aware that it has ever been noticed by geologists, that basaltic rocks and basaltic pillars, commencing first at Fairhead and the Giants' Causeway, the most splendid examples that perhaps exist, continue to make their appearance in various places as we advance to the northward, on or near to the same meridian line, passing through the western islands of Scotland, exhibiting a magnificent display on the Island of Staffa, and from thence showing themselves in more or less perfection and beauty along the Hebrides, and as far as the Feroe Islands. Advancing still farther, with a little inclination to the westward, they are found in profusion in almost every part of Iceland, intermingled with every species of volcanic production, the whole of

X. this

this immense island evidently owing its existence to the agency of subterranean fire. Nor does the basaltic formation cease at Iceland, but, continuing northerly with a small inclination to the eastward, it breaks out again on the small island of Jan Meyen, which is also wholly of volcanic origin, consisting chiefly of the Mountain of Beerenberg, 6870 feet high; and on the sides of which are two craters, one of them, as stated by Mr. Scoresby, being six or seven hundred yards in diameter; and the belt between the mountain and the sea is composed of cinders, slags, scoriæ, and trap rocks, striking through black sand and vesicular basalt, the last of which, high up on the side of the mountain, exhibits columnar masses.

1

'Here, then, we have the plain and undeniable evidence of subterranean or sub-marine fire, exerting its influence under the sea, almost in a direct line, to the extent of 16 degrees of latitude, or more than 1100 statute miles. If we are to suppose that one and the same efficient cause has been exerted in heaving up this extended line of igneous formations, from Fairhead to Jan Meyen, we may form some vague notion how deep-seated the fiery focus must be to impart its force, perhaps through numerous apertures, in a line of so great an extent, and nearly in the same direction. It may probably be considered the more remarkable, that no indication whatever is found of volcanic fire on the coast-line of Old Greenland, close to the westward of the lastmentioned island, and also to Iceland, nor on that of Norway on the opposite side, nor on the islands of Spitzbergen; on these places all is granite, porphyry, gneiss, mica-slate, clay-slate, lime, marble, and sandstone.''-pp. 275-277.

We cannot draw our present article to a close without some allusion to the pains which Mr. Barrow appears to have taken in obtaining answers to a series of questions for the information of a member of the Statistical Society of London. The chapter containing this information is valuable. It states the gross amount of the population to be about 53,000——

སཱཾ སྒྲ

This is but a scanty population for so extensive an island, whose surface is to that of Ireland as 1 to 11, or thereabouts; but, as I was assured, one-third part is the very least that could be assumed as wholly useless to the inhabitants. The centre of the island, being nothing but clusters of yokuls or snowy mountains, is said to be fully equal to that extent; so that the inhabited part cannot be reckoned at more than 25,000 square miles; and the population on each square mile will not exceed 2 persons. This fact alone will suffice to show to what inconveniences the inhabitants must be subject in such a country where there are no roads, and over which it is utterly impracticable to attempt to stir in the winter months while the snow is on the ground.'-p. 285.

The population of Iceland may be strictly divided into two classes, the fishing and the pastoral. The export of wool is considerable amounting of late years to from 3000 to 4000 Skippund.

This