| Dan. feet= | Eng. feet. | N. lat. | W. long. (C.)= | Greenwich. | ||
| Snæfellsjökull, | 4577 | 4713 | 64° 48´ 4´´ | 36° 25´ 8´´ | 23° 51´ | |
| Hekla, [64] | 4961 | 5108 | 63° 59´ 2´´ | 32° 19´ 2´´ | 19° 45´ | |
| Eyjafjallajökull,[65] | 5432 | 5593 | 63° 37´ 2´´ | 32° 16´ 18´´ | 19° 42´ |
From these tables we see that the north-eastern and south-eastern quarters contain not only the greatest number of heights, respectively twenty-five and twenty, exceeding 1000 Danish feet, but also the apex of Iceland. The north-western, though generally a high level, has only three master peaks, and the traveller’s eye soon determines the south-western to be the lowest of all. It may here be remarked that the islanders have names for the mountains, peaks, and even blocks, as well as for the valleys, whereas the Arabs, as a rule, name only their wadys.
Upon the points above named,
“Nix jacet et jactam nec sol pluviæque resolvunt
Indurat Boreas, perpetuamque facit.”
The snow-line above the tableland (1500 to 2000 feet) varies according to position and formation of ground from 2000 to 3500[66] feet over sea-level. The mean has been laid down at 2830 feet. Iceland, as far as it is known, contains few true glaciers. The best known of the Skriðjöklar, glaciers mouvants, the “vacillating jökuls” of Henderson (i., pp. 237, 265), protruded by the thrust from behind and above, are the southern offshoots of the great Klofajökull. Two have been often described—the Skeiðarárjökull and the Breiðamerkrjökull. Concerning these ice masses, which are confined, as far as is known, to the southern and the south-eastern shores, and which slope gently to the sea, it is generally believed in Iceland that the congealed tracts are diminishing. Professor Tyndall observed the same in the Mer de Glace, and Mr Freshfield on the Caucasus, where the excess of consumption over supply threatens to make the “gletchers” mere spectres of their former selves.
We now approach the modern formations, the volcanic tracts which overlie the plateaux of Palagonite, trap, and trachyte, and the valleys of elevation and erosion which cleave their masses. As usual throughout the world, the fire-vents are confined to the neighbourhood of the sea and lakes: the centre of Iceland is the Sprengisandur (bursting sand),[67] a black “Ruba’ el Kháli.” In many places the trap terraces have become a wall, over which great gushes of modern lavas have poured down towards the ocean—stone models of the waters which stream down the valleys, and which spring in cataracts from step to step.
Again, it is asserted, with premature generalisation, that the volcanic vents trend, as a rule, from north-east to south-west—a corollary of the “trachytic-band” theorem. The principal systems, which are the following, do not bear out this disposition, and it is probably true only of the south-western part of the island, which was first examined by travellers. Beginning from the north-west, we have the following list of eight great systems.
1. The Dranga[68]-Glámu system in the great palmated projection, the former lying north-east of the latter.
2. The Leirhnúkr, Krafla, and Heiðarfjall, near the Mý-vatn Lake. They anastomose, by the Ódáða-hraun, with the Vatnajökull and the Skaptár—the direction being north to south.
3. The Snæfellsjökull (Western Jökull) runs distinctly from west to east, ending at the sea-shore.