United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But this was not all; while one lava flood had chosen the Skapta for its bed, another, descending in a different direction, was working like ruin within and on either side the banks of the Hverfisfliot, rushing into the plain, by all accounts, with even greater fury and velocity.
To every other part of the island the engineer has succeeded in penetrating; one vast space alone of about four hundred square miles has defied his investigation. Over the area occupied by the Skapta Jokul, amid its mountain-cradled fields of snow and icy ridges, no human foot has ever wandered.
A whirlwind of ashes then swept over the face of the country, and on the 10th, innumerable fire spouts were seen leaping and flaring amid the icy hollows of the mountain, while the river Skapta, one of the largest in the island, having first rolled down to the plain a vast volume of fetid waters mixed with sand, suddenly disappeared.
Mounts Leirhnukr and Krabla, in the northeast, are very formidable; and one of the most terrible eruptions recorded in the island annals was that of the Skapta Jokul in 1783. We have now completed our summary of Madame Pfeiffer's Icelandic excursions.
Word Of The Day