[65] Popularly reckoned at 5900 English feet.
[66] This is about the forest limit of Scandinavia (2500 feet). The spruce fir first disappears, the Scotch fir rises a few hundred feet higher, and the highest is the birch, common and dwarf (Betula alba and nana).
[67] Sprengisandur; from “sprengja,” to burst, to split (in an active sense); “að sprengja hest,” to burst a horse, to ride it till it bursts. This is the reason of the name: the Sprengisandur has so few halting places, that there is a danger of working the horse to death before coming to a station. It is generally and erroneously translated “springing,” i.e., wind-blown, sands. The Ruba’ el Kháli (“empty fourth,” or quarter) is the great Arabian Desert.
[68] Drangr, = a lonely, upstanding rock; in popular lore, rocks thought to be giants turned into stones.
[69] The total number of recorded eruptions between A.D. 894 and 1862 is given by Baring-Gould, Introduction, xxi.-xxiii. There have been eighty-six from twenty-seven (reckoned in round numbers to be thirty) different spots, and the intervals of repose have varied in Hekla from six to seventy-six years; in Kötlu-gjá from six to three hundred and eleven. Such is the statement generally made. The fact is, however, that the exact number of the eruptions is not known, as the annals are more or less confused. The number of volcanic foci in Iceland is popularly and roughly laid down at twenty, and of these three are called active—Hekla, Katla or Kötlu-gjá, and the Vatnajökull volcano. It is a large proportion out of the total assigned to the world; the latter varies between the extremes of 167 and 300, showing the uncertainty of our present knowledge. Popular books speak of 2000 eruptions per century, or an average of twenty per annum.
[70] Smoke also appeared in the sea off Reykjanes, and pumice was thrown upon the shore during February 1834. This phenomenon was followed by an earthquake at Reykjavik, August 15-20, 1835.
[71] The formation of these four items will be explained in a subsequent page; they are very improperly massed together.
[72] The year after the author’s departure witnessed an eruption of the Skaptárjökull, in the north-west corner of the Vatnajökull, but it lasted only four to five days. The following account appeared in the papers; nothing more has subsequently been learned about it. But how can this outbreak “witness against Captain Burton’s assertion in the London Standard”—the same assertion which is here repeated in the text, and which was made in 1872?
“An Icelandic gentleman has kindly forwarded to us the following account of the eruption of the Skaptárjökull (announced by telegraph from Lerwick yesterday), as witnessed by him from Reykjavik, about 100 miles distant:
“‘Reykjavik, March 23, 1873.