| The degree of longitude in N. lat. 63° measures 2770·1 feet. |
| ” ” ” 64°”2674·9 ” |
| ” ” ” 65°”2578·9 ” |
| ” ” ” 66°”2432·1 ” |
| ” ” ” 67°”2384·6 ” |
| instead of 6082 at the Equator. |
[151] Sir George S. Mackenzie makes the desert tracts of inner Iceland to number 40,000 square miles, a figure which still deforms Lyell’s admirable Principles of Geology, 11th edit., vol ii., p. 454. Mr Vice-Consul Crowe reduces the total area to 29,440 square miles (geog.), of which two-thirds are upwards of 1000 feet above sea-level, and only 4288 square geographical miles are covered with perpetual snow, whose line begins between 2000 and 3500 feet.
[152] The proportion of “boe,” where barley can be cultivated in the Færoes, was, till very lately, 1:60 of outfield or pasture.
[153] The day is past when the “determinate lines of fracture,” which resembled the empirical parallelism and the pentagonal networks of mountains, connected Hekla with Etna—yet it was an improvement upon the theory which made both of them mouths of the Inferno. Evidence to the latter purport has been given in our law-courts. The earthquake district of Iceland was popularly supposed to include Great Britain, Northern France, Denmark, Scandinavia, and Greenland—regions of the most diversified formation. The theory seemed to repose for base upon isolated cases of simultaneity, possibly coincidents. But, as Dr Lauder Lindsay remarks, contemporaneity would suggest a vast extension of these limits. The (Lisbon) earthquake of 1755, for instance, extended from Barbary to Iceland, from Persia to Santos in the Brazil. The earthquake of 1783 was equally damaging to Calabria and to Iceland. Even in 1872, there were, as has been shown, almost simultaneous movements in Syria, Naples, and Iceland.
[154] Hooker tells us to pronounce Jökull “yuckull,” which involves three distinct errors, especially in the double liquid, which becomes everywhere, except before a vowel, dl or tl, like Popocatapetl. Iaki is a lump of ice, a congener of the Pers.
, like our “ice,” although Adelung derives the Germ. Eis-jöcher from the Lat. Jugum, and translates “Excelsi Jökli” by “Montana Glacies.” Jökull in Icel. primarily means “icicle,” a sense now obsolete. The signification “glacier” was probably borrowed from the Norse country Hardanger, the only Norwegian county in which “Jökull” appears as a local name; and it was applied to the “Gletschers” of the Iceland colonies in Greenland. “The Jökull” par excellence is Snæfellsjökull.
[155] The Icel. Stipti (Dan. Stift, and old Low Germ. Stigt) means a bishopric or ecclesiastical bailiwick. Hence Uno Von Troil translates Stiftamtmand by “bailiff of episcopal diocese,” and it gradually came to mean a civil governor. Cleasby informs us (sub voce) that both name and office are quite modern in Iceland.
[156] Further details concerning the governor-general will be found in the Journal.