which recognized him as chief pontiff, until human passion begun to produce its inevitable result,—disunion and bloody feuds. [Sidenote: 874 to 936.] At this distance of time, we do not estimate as we ought the number of emigrants from Norway to this newly-discovered island. Before the death of Harald Harfagre, most of its habitable portions had their occupants. What with the expulsion of the pirates, what with the voluntary exile of the chiefs who disdained to acknowledge a superior, the mother country must have lost no inconsiderable proportion of its inhabitants. It promised indeed to be left half peopled, when that monarch, in conjunction with the nobles who still remained, severely prohibited these emigrations. But neither he nor they could always watch the ports; still less could they control the motions of those who, while occupied in traffic from coast to coast, seized the opportunity of sailing for a land where there were no kings, no lords. Yet this was only true of the earliest state of Icelandic civilization. Subsequently, as the chiefs with their numerous slaves and their warlike dependants repaired to that place, a system resembling the clanship of Norway, though less despotic, was introduced. They, indeed, seized the land as their own, and parcelled it out to their followers on certain conditions. Among these conditions was always the payment of an annual rent in agricultural produce, and of something for the support of religion; but frequently was superadded some hereditary jurisdiction in the family of the chief. As he was often a pontiff no less than a patriarch, and was a reputed descendant from the divine family of the Ynglings, this union of the sacerdotal, of the judicial, and of almost royal functions, invested him with a consideration which he had scarcely enjoyed even in Norway. He who filled this two-fold office of pontiff and civil magistrate, who formed a sort of patriarchal aristocracy not uninteresting to contemplate, was called _Godar_, or _Haf-godar_. But in half a century after the colonization of the island, an evil arose for which the social constitutions of the period afforded no remedy. The isolation of the communities led to the formation of a separate rival spirit, which was often destructive to the district. When two neighbouring communities or their magistrates disputed, who was to act as the umpire? There was no monarch, no hereditary chief of the province, no Al-Thing, to decide between them. It became necessary, therefore, either to renounce the advantages of a general confederation, and to live in scattered independent tribes, whose hostilities must soon have led to the depopulation of the island, or to establish a superior authority. Hence the selection of a supreme judge, who was also empowered to collect laws, which, however, could not be obligatory until they had been accepted by the chiefs and the people of each community. The first