: f
was near Reikiavik ; wRen one day returning with
the governor from the hill above his house, we met
a peasant carrying under his arm a large stump of
a hirch-tree, of about the thickness of an ordinary
man’s thigh. As this W'as so unusual a sight, I
did not lose the opportunity of questioning him
about it; the peasant informed us that he had dug
it up from a morass close to Reikiavik, at a depth
of ten or twelve feet from the surface, and that he
was constantly in the habit of finding similar logs
equally large in the same morass, and at the same
depth, which the peasants about Reikiavik search
for to sell as fire-Avood. Although the wood
appeared internally to be much decayed from rot,
the bark was quite perfect. I regretted that, as
Ave Avere then on the point of leaA'ing Iceland, I
should be deprived of the opportunity of making
more minute inquiries on a subject Avhich must be
considered as one Avorthy the attention of future
travellers, there being noAV nothing of the description
groAving Avithin a very considerable distance from
Reikiavik.
Of t h e a n t i q u i t y o f s u r t u r b r a n d , t h e Archbishop
h a s h i m s e l f g i v e n p r o o f , b y t h e p o s i t i o n i n wRich i t
i s f o u n d , o f a n e p o c h , A v h i c h h e m u s t h e a b o l d m a n ,
A v h o A A ' o u l d v e n t u r e t o c a l c u l a t e i t s d a t e * , f o r h e t e l l s
* We have heard o f one man, however, who assumed the
several strata of lava as a criterion for calculating the age o f the
world— U Canonico Recupero— who attended Brydone np Mount
/Ktna. " I f ,” says h e , " i t requires two thousand years to form a
Chap. V .]
us th a t it has been found, as indeed we know it has
been, under four several strata alternating Avith
solid rock of basalt, compact and porous lava, and
scoriae. There can be little doubt that many of the
specimens of surturbrand are of fir, and others of
o a k ; I have one of the latter, with a knot so decidedly
marked that it can scarcely he mistaken,
and it is not pretended that either of these trees
ever grcAV in Iceland, Avhich we may safely assert
is not the fact, at least since the time when
elephants and mastodons inhabited the shores of the
Polar Seas. Why firs and birches of a considerable
growth should not grow here, is a curious question,
since both have been found by Von Buch and De
Capell Brooke growing vigorously up the sides of the
mountains in NorAvay, as high as the latitude 68^°,
full five degrees higher than the southern coast of
Iceland—nay, at Tromsoe, in 691°, the former says
“ the birches remained vigorous and beautiful more
than six hundred feet upAvards *. The latter tra veller,
speaking of the same place, says “ Forests of
hirch and aspen SAvept doAvn the steep sides to the
'M
scanty soil on the surface o f a bed of lava, as I have discovered seven
distinct strata of lava, the lowest of these must have flowed down
the sides of .Titna fourteen thousand years ago.” The bishop warned
him to be upon his guard, and not to pretend to he a better historian
than Moses; hut he declared it went against his conscience to
make his mountain so young as the lawgiver makes the world, and
that he must stick to h is theory at the expense of his canonicals.
* Travels through Norway and Lapland, p. 220.