southern and western districts. It is, however,
much to be dreaded that a still
greater famine and mortality have visited
the country, or at least particular parts of
it, during the last winter, that of 1/85,
when it was scarcely in the power of man
to alleviate the calamity *.
§ XXXV.
The prevalence of violent earthquakes,
as well as of the fire itself, and the extraordinary
destruction occasioned by these in
the district of West Skaptefield, are circumstances
which are rendered sufficiently
apparent in Fliotshverfet by the great
chasms in the earth, which are there particularly
abundant. It has been before remarked
(§ ix.) that earthquakes were more
violent before the fire broke out, but that
from the period of the eruption they gradually
subsided; so that in the year 1784
the shocks were weak and scarcely per*
The total number of persons that have perished in
Iceland, in consequence of the volcanic eruption,
amounted, as the Etatsroed himself has assured me,
to nine thousand. H.
ceptible, excepting only for two days before
I left the country, the 14th and l6th
of August. It was in the afternoon of the
former day, between four and five o’clock,
that the whole house at Inderholme, in the
district of Borgefiord (where I was then
staying) began to tremble; and, as we expected
nothing else than that it would instantly
fall in, we naturally ran out. When
I looked up to the steep mountain, called
Akrafiel, to the northward of the farm-house,
I perceived its whole south side obscured
by a vaSt body of smoke, arising
from the fragments of rock which were
continually falling. In another place, a
little below the farm-house, large masses
were broken off a lofty ridge of rock that
rose near the' sea; yet, thanks to God,
there was no damage done at this place.
On the following night several slight agitations
were perceptible both to myself and
other people then in the farm-house, sufficient
indeed to rouse me from my sleep,
though not to cause any serious alarm ;
but on the l 6th we had again a long and
dreadful shock, almost as heavy as the former
had been.