The accompanying maps, prepared for my forthcoming volume, ("Ultima Thule"), mark the four paroxysmal eruptions which took place upon the same area during 1867, 1869, 1870 (to 1872, at which last date all activity had subsided), and about Christmas 1874. Number five, the latest phenomenon, broke out on March 29, 1875.

These movements may or may not be connected with the five days' eruption of Skaptár Jökull (January 9, 1873), recorded by all the journals of Europe; but they certainly occupy the heart and the southern outskirts of the Odáða Hraun, the great lava field subtending the north of the Vatna Jökull, and extending to the N.N.E., almost as far as the Lake Region-Mý-vatn and its oasis. The name is variously translated "Terrible wilderness" (Henderson), and "Desert of the Evil Deed" (Baring Gould), whilst the area is differently calculated at 1160 to 1500 square miles; in fact, one half of the Vatna Jökull. Viewed from the nearest heights-Bláfjall, for instance-it is a grim and ghastly picture, a region of ruin and desolation, a fitting mise en scène for the Last Man: my companions remarked that such a spectacle would soon give them the horrors. I see no difficulty beyond a certain expense in crossing and exploring this waste: at the same time, I doubt that the feat would yield any results; and exploration purely for exploring appears to me like "climbing for climb."

This "great and terrible wilderness," so small and mean in comparison with the Sabrás of Africa, Asia, and South America, and yet so grisly in its brown-black desolation, is supposed by Baring Gould to be the gift of the Trölladyngjur and of Herðubreið, while Mr W. L. Watts would derive it solely from Skjaldbreið. I find it to be the produce of a multitude of craters which opened in and south of it, before the days when Öræfi and other lofty peaks, attracting rain and snow, built up the mighty névé, which monopolises the south-eastern corner of Iceland. The peculiarity of the latest outbreaks (1867-1875) is the distance, not to say isolation, of the vents from any large body of water, suggesting the unpleasant fact that we must modify received opinion. For instance, the eruption of Christmas 1874 upon the south-eastern flank of the distorted horseshoe Askja (oval-shaped wooden casket) or Dyng