THE VOLCANOES OF ICELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 149, 10 March 1876, Page 7

THE VOLCANOES OF ICELAND.

+4 Me. W. L. Watts sends from Leith, Scotland, the following graphic account of a grand eruption witnessed by him in Iceland last August : — "When on my way from Husavik, in the North of Iceland, I stopped on Sunday, August 15, at Storavellis, in the valley of Skjalfanfidajot, where I received the intelligence that ashes had fallen that morning at an adjacent farm. During the previous night a man had arrived from Grimstathis, a farm upon the eastern and opposite side of the Myvatns Orcefl. He reported that between ten and eleven o'clock on Sunday Morning, August 15, a smart shock of earthq-iake was felt at Grimstathis, travelling from northeast to southwest. Almost simultaneously columns of smoke were seen upon the plain cf Myvatns Oroefl, and forth with an eruption commenced from the same place as last spring. Upon August 15, accompanied by a farmer from Granavatn, I set out for the eruption. Upon entering a valley through the mountains of t Myvatn, by which wo intended to gain access to the Myvatns Orcefl, a few columns of smoke in the distance warned us that the | eruption lay before us. Upon emerging from the glen, a line of | some twenty columns of smoke burst upon our view at the north- ] crn end of which lay two black mounds in close proximity. From ' the most southerly of these rose two columns of dense black smoke, I which struggled to ascend, biit worn beaten back to the earth again ] by the wind, in a foul, heavy mist, which spread itself out for miles over the lava streams, both old and new, which lay to the eastward, clinging to the higher crags in dark, ominous masses, and obscuring large patches of the more level plain. From its neighbor to the north, a high column of stones, ashes and dust proclaim the principal volcano vent. " Suddenly, with a roar, every particle seemed on fire, explosion after explosion casting the larger fragments to a height beyond our view in the dense canopy of vapor which hung over us, making the ground upon which we stood and the rocks round us tremble. Lava then poured over its more northerly side, the large column of smoke sank, and stones and cinders were alone ejected. This colmun of debris continually varied both in size and volume, sometimes clustering " like a swarm of bees" in the smoke, appareutly sauxely one hundred, feet above the (.later j at other time*

it shot up in a large column with explosive violence, the masses of scoriae shrieking in their passage through the air. Then came a 1 c.ilm. and with a rending sound a new crater opened in the north side of the mound, from whkh a stream of white hot lava tumbled in a cascade of fiery froth upon the old lava stream of last spring, I where a dense smoke and the sound of splitting rocks marked its progress, till it oozed in bright red viscid masses through the interstices of the older lava, forming pools which glowed for a moment, and turned back beyond the limit of the elder stream. "It was now a dim twilight, although only five p.m. We stopped amid a patch of wild oats, which grow profusely upon many parts of these sands, leaving our horses to feed whilo we took our evening meal upon a scind bank commanding a full view of the eruption, now little more than a mile away. Our horses did not appear particularly frightened at the eruption, but for half an hour stood quietly gazing at it, and then took quietly to grazing. Upon approaching the volcano as far as the heated lava would allow, I found it to consist of a cluster of black mounds, which together described an irregular cone, in the centre of which, probably towards the termination of the eruption of last spring, a large crater had been formed a little more than a mile in circumference, the north wall of which had been bi*oken down. " From the centre of this rose the conical walls of the crater that was now " erupting." In the north side of this was likewise a breach, through which, from time to time, the lava poured. From this cone a dense column of white hot atoms and fiery fragments was being ejected to the height of perhaps three or four hundred feet. Very little smoke was emitted from the cone, and the many cracks in its sides enabled the glow from the intense fire within to shine thi'ough with such brilliancy that it gave the cone the appearance of being wrapped in flames. Two smaller craters were now visible — one iv the north base of the mound, and one in a short distance in the lava itself still further north. They were burning with a brilliant white light, emitting a rending, crashing sound, but at this perod they were " erupting" with little violence. From these two craters the principal lava streams were flowing, which now advanced with considerable rapidity, encircling from time to time patches of the ancient lava and sand which form the plain, and finally overwhelming them in its fiery embrace. Night had now closed in. and as heated lava and noxious gases from it prevented me getting nearer than a few hundred yards from the principal crater, I lit my pipe at the nearest lava, and returned to camp. There, sitting by my tent upon the high bank of volcanic smd, for a long time I sat gazing at the grand, glorious spectacle of the vast fountains of fire that in a continuous stream assailed the sky."