The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

80 ISLANDS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC.reservoirs, which steadily increased in volume for six months without being ableto reach the sea. The larger of these was 50 miles long, with a mean breadth of15 miles, and both were 500 feet deep in many places. The amount of lava dischargedon this occasion was set down at 654 billions of cubic yards, a quantity sufficientto cover the whole globe with a layer nearly a twenty-sixth part of an inch inthickness.The finest pastures in the island were buried in ashes, the flocks perishedin thousands, and then came famine and pestilence, in two years destroying 9,336human beings, 28,000 horses, 11,500 head of cattle, and over 190,000 sheep.Beneath the vast Klofa or Vatna snow-field unknown volcanoes are active,at times diffusing sulphurous or pestiferous vapours over the whole island. InFig. 12. Quicksands or the SKAr-riR-JiJkULL.Scale 1 : 1,000,000.i1861 these sub-glacial fires, possibly accompanied by streams of surface lava,melted such a quantity of snow that the southern plains were entirely flooded, and80 miles from the shore some English vessels had to make their way througha current of muddy water 30 miles wide. Since then the hydrography of thisregion has been completely modified. The river SkerSara, formerly flowing fromthe east side of the glacier of like name, has been replaced by insignificant rivulets,while the true SkerSara, in certain seasons almost impassable and several hundredyards broad, now flows 8 miles to the west of its old bed.