The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1926, Page 15

frost and steam, of ice and fire, of gloom and
colour, of darkness and light. It is, on the whole,
unequalled in all Europe for its gushing foun-
tains of seething water, for its stupendous streams
of lava, for its vast volume of milk-white torrents
plunging over grim and swarthy rocks, for the
varied, weird and fantastic forms of its moun-
tains, for the intense green of its meads and low-
lands and often of its climbing slopes, for the
luminous tints of its peaks, for the splendours of
its heavens, and for the grey, overawing desolation
poured out by its volcanoes. Landing, let us say,
in the later May or the earlier June, the tourist is
at first dazzled by the glory of con-
Continuous tinuous daylight. But his eye soon
Daylight, accepts, with contented pleasure, the
unwonted radiance, once he has got
► over his surprise at learning that God has given
the sun to this favoured land for a light by night
as well as by day. At midnight he reads his guide-
book, or gazes af the landscape, near or far, with
the same ease and enjoyment as at midday. If he
be early enough, he may still see a pale aurora
shimmering in the firmament, but for a sight of
that phenomenon in its full magnificence, wrap-
ping the whole sky in a mantle of overwhelming
and ever-shifting beauty — of which dwellers in
lower latitudes can form no adequate conception
— he must wait until the nights have grown
longer and darker in the last fortnight of August
and through the months of September and
October. As he becomes more familiar with his
surroundings he will discover, if he be English,
that he is acquiring a clearer notion than he has
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