In the first place, everybody knows, or ought to know, that Iceland, as well as Greenland, belongs to Denmark, and is ruled by a governor appointed by the Danish king. Everybody, however, does not know that, while Iceland is over six hundred miles from the nearest point of main-land in Europe, it is only one hundred and forty miles from Greenland, and is now generally regarded as being a part of America. It is as large as Scotland and Wales taken together, or as the American States of Maine and New Hampshire. Two of its northern points just touch the arctic circle, but owing to the influence of the warm ocean-currents surrounding it, its average winter weather is no more severe than that of New England, though its summers are short, wet, and chilly. The whole island is of volcanic origin, and though it was thrown up from the sea thousands of years ago, it still smokes and steams in many places, and displays every evidence of containing some of the principal vents for the everlasting fires that rage just below the earth’s crust. There are now no trees in Iceland, other than stunted willows and birches, eight or ten feet high; but it is said to have been formerly covered with fine forests of fir-trees, from which ships were built and furnished with spars. Such of these forests as were not cut down were destroyed by the awful volcanic eruptions of the last century, which covered the whole country with lava, pumice-stone, sulphur, or ashes, killed nearly ten thousand human beings, and immense numbers of horses, cattle, and sheep, poisoned vast shoals of fish in the surrounding ocean, and threatened the total destruction of everything living, both animal and vegetable, on the unfortunate island. Since that time the fortunes of Iceland have gone steadily from bad to worse. Its climate is slowly but surely growing colder. Its people are becoming poorer and poorer, and are leaving it for more favored lands in ever-increasing numbers. Each winter thousands of icebergs and vast fields of floe-ice drift across from Greenland, and pile themselves up on its western coast, clasping the island in a deadly embrace, and threatening its very life with their chill breath.