its base. The most dreadful volcanic eruption known in Iceland was from Skaptar Yokul, an ice mountain, near the sources of several rivers, and composed of about twenty red conical hills. It took place in 1783, and caused great devastations. Oræfa Yokul, the highest mountain in Iceland, is supposed to be an elevation of 6,240 feet. The Sulphur Mountain has been described as a natural cauldron of black boiling mud;' the sulphur exhales from it in great profusion.

3. CLIMATE. The cold is not more intense in Iceland than in the most favored parts of Denmark, and the thermometer seldom or never sinks to zero. What affects the temperature most is the arrival of floating ice from Greenland. This comes in immense masses, often so large as to run aground in eighty fathoms. When it remains for a long time on the coast, the winter snows are longer in melting, the frost remains in the ground, vegetation is checked, and the summer is very short.

4. GEOLOGY, &c. Iceland is a chain of immense rocks in the structure of which trap and basalt predominate. Their summits are crowned with snow, though everlasting fires burn in their subterranean caverns. Tracts of lava traverse the island in every direction. The general appearance of the country is the most rugged and dreary imaginable. On every side are the yawning craters of active or extinguished volcanoes, the sources of the surrounding desolation. In many places the basalt takes the form of immense masses of pillars, like the well known Giant's Causeway in Ireland.

The hot springs of this island are very remarkable, and are quite numerous. The most celebrated is the Great Geyser, in the neighborhood of Mount

Hecla. The water boils with a loud rumbling noise in a well of an irregular form, about ten feet in diameter, widening near the top, and opening into a basin fifty-six feet by forty-six. Its explosions are announced by sounds resembling the low report of artillery. The first jets which are thrown up, seldom exceed fifteen or twenty feet, but the highest often exceed eighty. On the propulsion of the jet, the great body of the column rises perpendicularly, and then divides into beautiful curvated ramifications, which are projected in every direction. The explosions of the Great Geyser take place at intervals of about six hours. There are many other inferior springs of boiling water, and several of boiling mud.

At Surtshellir is a long cavern, forty feet high, fifty broad, and five thousand thirty-four in length. The entrance is through several chasms in the

roof. It was evidently formed by volcanic agency, and is supposed by the natives to have been formerly the residence of the king of the regions of fire. One of the minor caves is beautifully coated with pure ice in every form of crystallization.

5. NATURAL PRODUCTIONS. Among the vegetables is a species of wild wheat, which may be made into good flour. Besides the lichens, there are many antiscorbutic roots and several marine plants which are used as food. Wild berries of an excellent flavor are found in abundance. Of late years gardening has been practised throughout the country, but with little success. There are no better trees than birch and brushwood. Immense quantities of pine, firs, and other trees, however, are thrown upon the northern coasts. 6. MINERALS. A very singular mineral production of this island is a kind of fossil wood, black, heavy, and slightly carbonized, burning with flame. There is another kind of mineral wood, heavier than coal, which burns without flame, and contains chalcedony in its transverse fissures. Of the ordinalava there are several different formations. The central mountains contain copper and iron, which are not wrought for want of fuel; also marble, lime, plaster, porcelain clay, several kinds of bole, onyx, agate, jasper, and an abundance of sulphur.

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7. TOWNS, POPULATION, &c. The capitol is Reykiavik: it is a seaport with some trade. The other considerable towns are Holm and Husarik. The chief agricultural product is hay. Most of the inhabitants are employed in fishing. The trade consists in the exportation of fish, oil, skins, feathers and sulphur. The population is about 50,000.

8. INHABITANTS. The Icelanders are rather tall, of a frank open countenance, florid complexion, and yellow flaxen hair. The women are short in proportion to the men, and inclined to corpulency.

9. DRESS. The common dress of the men is a linen shirt, a short jacket, and wide breeches reaching above the jacket. The men wear three cornered hats. The most curious part of the female dress is the turban, of white linen, stiffened with a great many pins, and about twenty inches in height. It is fastened to the head by a dark silk handkerchief that is tied several times around it, and completely hides the hair. This has for ages been the national dress.

10. LANGUAGE. This is the Icelandic, an original language, or the Scandinavian, the stock of several languages in the North of Europe.

11. MANNER OF BUILDING. The houses in Iceland are all constructed in the same manner. The walls are thick, and composed of alternate layers of earth and of stone. The rafters are a few beams of drift wood, or of whalebones interlaced with twigs, and covered with turf. This kind of roof always bears good grass, which is cut with the scythe. There is generally a dark alley running through the middle of the house, and on either side of this are the entrances to the various apartments, as the kitchen, the stranger's room, the sleeping room, &c. The stranger's room is always the best. in the house. The light is admitted from the roof through windows of glass, or of the membranes of sheep. There is no chimney in the kitchen, and the smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. The Icelanders never have fire even in winter, but for cooking. The beds are arranged on each side the sleeping room. They are very narrow, yet the people sleep by couples lying head to foot. The floor is commonly the damp earth. This manner of life causes plumonary diseases, which carry off many people, and few attain to old age.

12. FOOD. The ordinary diet is of the simplest kind. The breakfast is of sour curds, mixed sometimes with sweet milk and flavored with berries. The dinner is of dried fish and butter. The latter when rancid is most

esteemed, and bears double the price of fresh and new. The supper is like the breakfast, or it is sometimes a kind of porridge; and this is to a foreigner the most palatable of all the Icelandic diet. On great occasions, the people have boiled mutton and rye porridge. Beef is seldom eaten, and there is no bread except a little of the sour Danish biscuit. The usual beverage is whey mixed with water.

13. DISEASES. The most common maladies are obstinate coughs, or consumptions; and the want of personal neatness engenders cutaneous diseases. Many children die before the tenth year, and about a twenty-fifth of the deaths are from accidents, generally drowning.

14. MODE OF TRAVELLING. No other civilized country offers so many obstacles to the traveller as Iceland. There are no coasting vessels to take him from one place to another along the shore, and there are no vehicles, and scarcely any roads in the interior. The only way of travelling is on horseback, and in general the horse is purchased, not hired. There is however a truly hospitable custom and feeling, that leads the inhabitants to exchange with the traveller, without a shilling for boot, a good and fresh horse for one lean and jaded with a long journey. The horses are seldom housed or fed even in winter, but subsist chiefly on the sea weeds thrown up by the tide. They are of a stout race, and are broken to an amble, an easy gait for an equestrian. As there are no inns, and little desirable shelter in the small and crowded dwellings, the traveller usually carries a tent, and the nature of the roads imposes an equal necessity for a guide; while the fogs or storms of snow, make it necessary that he should also be provided with a compass. He must ford rivers if the ice be too weak to bear him, and if not provided with shelter, he must sometimes seek it in caverns, or build a house of snow. In winter it is impossible to travel at all, and even in summer when there is no obstruction from ice and snow there is enough of difficulty and danger in crossing rivers, climbing mountains, passing morasses, and picking a way over the burning and smoking ground, rent by earthquakes into chasms.

Towards the end of June, the Icelanders make a journey to the coast to sell their productions to the factories, and bring back other commodities in exchange, for the traffic is carried on rather by exchange than money-though the absence of money has produced a sort of substitute in fish and wadmal (a coarse cloth). Of fish, there were in the time of Von Troil, forty-eight to the rix dollar.

This transportation of goods to the coast and back, leads the people for mutual assistance to travel in caravans, and sometimes seventy horses are seen together, going down to the coast, and often at the factories there are three hundred horses, and half as many tents.

15. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. It is only on the confines of the polar circle that we must look for society in a state of primitive simplicity, and with a diffusion of a great degree of knowledge, though without the answering grade of refinement. The remote insular situation of Iceland, and its poverty, which one of its pastors called the 'bulwark of its happiness,' is a fortunate barrier to the visits of foreigners, who might indeed introduce to those secluded regions more knowledge of the world, coupled with a greater familiarity with its vices.

The early settlers of Iceland, like those of New England, were a race well fitted to leave a high state of moral feeling and intelligence to their descendants. Many of them were the distinguished men of Norway, who preferred exile to oppression at home, and who carried to their adopted country the germ of republican institutions, and of the knowledge that can the best uphold them.

The most prominent traits in the Icelanders are a love of their country,

hospitality, intelligence, simplicity and piety. Though social, they are rather disposed to be serious. They have little conception of humor, and are seldom known to laugh. Yet they may be called an eminently happy people, and seldom leave their own country: the few who go to Copenhagen are never satisfied till they return to Iceland. It would almost seem that happiness, and simplicity of character, had deserted the sunny skies and fertile fields of southern Europe, to nestle among the icy crags and volcanic ruins of the frozen

zone.

In Iceland a stranger is at once struck with the oriental manner of salutation, borrowed probably from the scriptures, with which all are familiar though until lately but few copies were possessed. The common salutation on meeting is that of the East Peace be with you,' to which the reply is, The Lord bless you.' On knocking at a door to gain admittance it is common to say, 'The Lord be in this place,' to which the reply is similar to the last.

It is the universal custom to give thanks with clasped hands before and after a meal when the meal is over, the guests kiss both the master and the mistress, thanking them for their kindness. At meeting and parting, the kiss is the universal salutation: on entering a family the visitor must thus salute them all, according to seniority or station, beginning with the highest: at his departure he reverses this, and the lowest is taken leave of first.

Before and after crossing a river the Icelander raises his hat and makes a mental prayer, and also when he goes in a boat from the shore. This religious sentiment is the leading trait in the Icelandic character. Of their characteristic faith, Doctor Henderson gives this example. 'I could not but notice,' said he, the manner in which my hostess spoke of her children; on my inquiring how many she had, her reply was, I have four; two of them are here with us, and the other two are with God. It is the best with those that are with him, and my chief concern about those that remain is, that they may reach heaven in safety.'

16. AMUSEMENTS. The amusements of the Icelanders are of a grave character, founded less on levity than the intelligence that is so much diffused among them, and though they have chess, and cards, they generally prefer to pass their evenings in recounting some legend of their ancestors, or reading by turns the history of their own country, or some other useful book. As books are scarce in Iceland, copies are multiplied in manuscript, and many of them are so well executed as to be beautiful specimens of the art.

17. EDUCATION. There is no other country in which so great an amount of knowledge is universally diffused as in Iceland; and yet there is on the island but one school, and that is designed chiefly for such as are to fill offices in church and state. The education is strictly domestic, and no one acquires any that he does not get at home. The extent to which it is carried is scarcely credible. It is not uncommon to hear a youth quote a Greek or Latin author, and in almost every hut there is some person capable of conversing well upon subjects, far above the understanding of those of the same grade in other countries. The Icelanders are not only familiar with their own history and literature but they are in a great degree conversant with those of other nations. It is surprising to hear these self-taught people conversing on subjects that belong to a professor's chair. Among other instances of this wonderful diffusion of education, Doctor Henderson relates that he was reading to a common person a letter addressed by the King of Persia to the English Envoy, concerning a version of the New Testament. The date was 1229, and a little boy remarked that it must be a very old letter. 'No,' said the peasant it was not written according to our computation, but it was dated from the Hegira.'

18. ARTS, SCIENCES, &c. Till the year 1264, from the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, it was the only place on the North where literature was cultivated. The Scandinavian legends were wild and warlike. The Scalds were the poets and historians, and the Sagas recalled the memory of the past in stories. These traditional histories and poems were collected by Saemund Sigfussen, who was born A. D. 1056. This collection is called the Edda. The mythology of the Scandinavians was copious. Divine honors were paid to Odin, who was supposed to e a sanguinary Deity, receiving into his paradise Valhalla, only the brave and warlike. Friga, his wife, was the second deity, and Thor the third. There were many others inferior.

19. RELIGION. The religion is strictly Lutheran, and the parishes are in number 184. The clergy, who are all natives of the island, are but partly maintained by tithes; they cultivate the glebe attached to the churches, and many of them are obliged to follow the occupation of fishermen. The richest living in the island does not produce 200 rix dollars, and there are parishes in which the stipend is as low as five. But the clergy are faithful if not for hire. Every one keeps what is called a 'register of souls,' or a statement of the conduct, abilities and proficiency of each individual in the parish. The family books are also entered in this register which is given to the Dean at his annual visitation. Every clergyman is bound to visit every family in his parish at least twice a year, when he catechises every inmate, old and young.

20. GOVERNMENT AND LAWS. Iceland is a colony of Denmark; the Governor is appointed by the King, and holds his office five years.

The laws are of the mild character that befits a country where crimes are almost unknown. Fines, imprisonment, and whipping are the only penalties inflicted in Iceland. Criminals that are capitally convicted are sent to Copenhagen to be beheaded, as for many years, no person has been found on the island to execute the sentence of the law.

21. HISTORY. Iceland was settled by the Norwegians in the 9th century, and for many years constituted an independent republic. In 1264, it came under the dominion of the King of Norway, and was subsequently transferred with that country to the crown of Denmark, under which it remains at present.

1. BOUNDARIES AND EXTENT. Mexico is bounded N. and N. E. by the United States; E. by the Gulf of Mexico; S. E. by Guatemala; S. and W. by the Pacific Ocean. It extends from 86° 56' to 124° 30′ W. lon., and from 16° to 40° N. lat. Its length of coast on the Pacific is about 2,800 miles; its breadth, where greatest, about 1,400, but in the southern part only 15); and it contains 1,108,998 square miles.

2. MOUNTAINS. A range of mountains passes through the whole length of this country from S. E. to N. W. called the Cordilleras of Mexico. Some of the most elevated summits of this chain are the Popoca-tepetl, or the 'Mountain of Smoke,' a volcano covered with perpetual snow, its elevation being 17,735 feet above the level of the sea, and the Istac-cihuatl, or the 'White Woman,' having an altitude of 15,700 feet. These mountains are distinctly visible from the city of Mexico, and the snow with which they