The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

34 ISLANDS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC.northern extremity of the rocky peninsula was the Lbgberg (" Mountain of theLaw "), where the wise men sat in council. Here the delegates of the peopleassembled for centuries. The lawgiver took his seat on the highest step of thelava ;grouped round about him on lower seats were the assessors of the HighCourt ; sentinels mounted guard at the entrance of the isthmus ;while on theopposite side of the crevasse sat the people listening to the decrees and mandatesof the supreme congress. After proclamation of their doom, criminals were herehurled into the abyss, while wizards and witches were burnt at a stake set up on arocky eminence. The ping was not only the great national assembly, but also theyearly market, where for eight days all the trading business of the people waseffected, whence the name of Almannagja, or "All Men's Cry."Now the Albing is a wretched and often forsaken grazing ground.Rivers,Lakes, and Fiords."When spring releases the ice-bound land the island is everywhere abundantlywatered, except in the tracks covered by thick layers of ashes.Such, in the centreof the country is the region known as the Sprengisan^r, or " Bursting Sands,"so called from the danger the traveller's horse here runs of perishing. Thesewastes were crossed for the first time in 1810.Yet some of the streams rising inthe vicinity and on the Vatna-Jokull slopes are veritable rivers in the volume oftheir waters. The pjorsa, flowing from the north side of the Skaptar-Jokull, anddraining the Hekla district, and the Olfusa, which receives the Hvita and thetepid rivulets of the geysers, both in the south-west, are the two great historicstreams of Iceland. The north and north-east are watered by four copious rivers,the Skjalfjandifliot, the two Jokulsa, or " Glacier Waters," and the Lagarfliot, allflowing from the frozen plateau of Vatna. The largest in the island is the WesternJokulsa, bordering the sulphur region on the east, one of whose falls, the famousDettifoss, is formed by a perpendicular basalt wall rising 200 feet above a lakeseveral hundred yards wide.The rivers and glacier torrents are almost impassable in the floods, and thenatives of the east coast, when bound for Reykjavik, prefer to round the Vatna-Jokull plateauon its north side rather than expose themselves to the ice-chargedstreams which escape from its southern base, and which are constantly shiftingtheir beds. They especially dread the SkeiSarar-Sandr, or " Quicksands," whichcover an area of over 400 square miles to the south of the Vatna-Jokull.There are no extensive lakes in the island, the largest being the pingvalla inthe south, and Myvatn in the north. But there are hundreds, even thousands,of smaller bodies of water, from the lake properly so called, down to mere pools.In many districts we may travel for days over hill and dale on the buoyant surfaceof bogs, beneath which many such waters lie concealed. The countless basinsscattered over certain tracts, and without visible outlets, are not brackish, probablybecause their lava beds resist disintegration, and thus retain their salineparticles.