Volume 2

Principles of geology : being an inquiry how far the former changes of the earth's surface are referable to causes now in operation. / By Charles Lyell ...

  • Lyell, Charles, Sir, 1797-1875.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of geology : being an inquiry how far the former changes of the earth's surface are referable to causes now in operation. / By Charles Lyell ... Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    of it; and in some places where the steam could not gain vent, it blew up the rock, throwing fragments to the height of more than 150 feet. On the 18th of June, another ejection of liquid lava rushed from the volcano, which flowed down with amazing velocity over the surface of the first stream. By the damming up of the mouths of some of the tributaries of the Skapta, many villages were completely overflowed with water, and thus great destruction of property was caused. The lava, after flowing for several days, was preci- pitated down a tremendous cataract called Stapafoss, where it filled a profound abyss, which that great waterfall had been hollowing out for ages, and, after this the fiery current again continued its course. On the 3rd of August, fresh floods of lava still pouring from the volcano, a new branch was sent off in a dif- ferent direction ; for the channel of the Skapta was now so entirely choked up, and every opening to the west and north so obstructed, that the melted matter was forced to take a new course, so that it ran in a south- east direction, and discharged itself into the bed of the river I lverfisfliot, where a scene of destruction scarcely inferior to the former was occasioned. These Ice- landic lavas (like the ancient streams which are met with in Auvergne, and other provinces of Central France,) are stated by Stephensen to have accumu- lated to a prodigious depth in narrow rocky gorges, but when they came to wide alluvial plains, they spread themselves out into broad burning lakes, sometimes from twelve to fifteen miles wide, and one hundred feet deep. When the ‘ fiery lake ’ which filled up the lower portion of the valley of the Skapta had been augmented by new supplies, the lava flowed up the course of the river to the foot of the hills from whence the Skapta