of the south country, although they have
been very perceptible, yet they have not
caused any great devastation. How far
they may at the same time have been felt
with any violence in the district of Skapte-
field is not yet known here: thus much
only we can say with certainty, that some
slight shocks had been perceived in the
beginning of the month of August, at which
time, the smoke appeared to have gathered
strength in the wild and mountainous districts
to the northward of Sideri.
I am well aware that many people may
be led to conjecture that these earthquakes
must have proceeded from great revolutions
in the bowels of the earth, or even possibly
from the circumstance of new eruptions having
taken place in the vicinity of the forseveral
places at once, it was natural for the neighboring
peasantry to be in great apprehension of more
general destruction; but, nevertheless, no other remarkable
damage appears to have been sustained
than that of the largest and most valuable part of the
Bird-mountain (a hill of the greatest value to the inhabitants),
having been cleft and thrown down, and
consequently rendered unserviceable for lodging the
nests of the sea-fowl in future.
mer fire, and therefore must in that district
have caused the greatest destruction. But,
for my own part, I should rather be tempted
to believe that, as these latter shocks
were most violent in the district of Aarnes,
weaker in Rangevalle and other southern
districts, and so slight as to be scarcely perceptible
either in the northern or the western
parts of the island, that they owed their
origin to some internal commotion in the
earth, in the vicinity of Hecla ; if they are
not (which God forbid) a prelude to an
eruption of the mountain itself.
It has also been shewn, that the annals of
Iceland cannot produce an instance of an
earthquake equally destructive as that just
mentioned, which, exclusively of its having
in a manner destroyed whole parishes and
districts, has also reduced many of the inhabitants
of the district of Aarnes to the
most deplorable state, as the small stock of
meat, and particularly of the common articles
of food, such as butter, &e., which
they had with the greatest difficulty secured
during the preceding summer, were by this
deplorable calamity spoiled by being buried