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have attained that rare privilege, not to form a single wish.”
I ought not to separate Iceland from Norway. This island, the largest in Europe next to Great Britain, is surrounded by that part of the northern sea, which geographers have been pleased to call the Deucalidonian ocean. Its length from east to west is about 112 Danish miles (12 to a degree) and its mean breadth may be 50 of those miles[1]. Nature itself hath marked out the division of this country[2]. Two long chains of mountains run from the middle of the eastern and western coasts, rising by degrees till they meet in the center of the island: from whence two other chains of smaller hills gradually descend till they reach the coasts that lie north and south; thus making a primary division of the country into four quarters (fierdingers) which are distinguished by the four points of the compass towards which they lie.
The whole island can only be considered as one vast mountain, interspersed with long and deep vallies, concealing in its bosom heaps of minerals, of vitrified and bituminous substances, and rising on all sides out of the ocean in the form of a short blunted cone[3].
