hand and a flint in the other, as if in the act of striking fire upon some tinder which lay beside him.  In the fore-part of the vessel several sailors were found lying dead in their berths, and the body of a boy crouched at the bottom of the gangway stairs.  Neither provisions nor fuel could be discovered anywhere; but Captain Warrens was prevented by the superstitious prejudices of his seamen from examining the vessel as minutely as he wished to have done.  He, therefore, carried away the log-book, and immediately steered to the southward, impressed with the awful example he had just witnessed of the danger of navigating the Polar Seas in high northern latitudes.  On returning to England, and inquiring and comparing accounts, he found that this vessel had been blocked up by the ice for upwards of thirteen years!!!  Yes!—­

  “’There lay the vessel in a realm of frost,
  Not wrecked, nor stranded, yet forever lost;
  Her keel embedded in the solid mass;
  Her glistening sails appear’d expanded glass.’”

[Illustration:  THE GEYSERS.]

GRANDY.  “A most awful situation to be placed in, surrounded on all sides by impenetrable ice, which closeth up the water as with a breast-plate.”

MRS. WILTON.  “Iceland is first in point of distance.  It is situated south east of Greenland, in the North Atlantic Ocean, and considered an appendage to America; although it was known seven centuries before the time of Columbus.  It is truly, a land of prodigies:  where the subterranean fires of the abyss burst through a frozen soil; where boiling springs shoot up their fountains, amidst eternal snows; and where the powerful genius of liberty and the no less powerful genius of poetry have given brilliant proofs of the energies of the human mind at the farthest confines of animated nature.”

CHARLES.  “There are twelve volcanoes in Iceland; the most celebrated of which is Mount Hecla, situated in the southern part of the island:  its elevation is about 4800 feet above the level of the sea.”

GEORGE.  “And there are hot springs, too, in this island; but they have not all the same degree of heat.  Mamma, do you know anything of them?”

MRS. WILTON.  “Those springs, whose tepid waters issue as gently as an ordinary spring, are called Langers, or baths; others that throw up boiling water with great noise, are denominated Caldrons, in Icelandic ‘Hverer.’  The most remarkable is the Geyser, which is found near Skalholdt, in the middle of a plain, where there are about forty springs of a smaller size.  It rises from an aperture nineteen feet in diameter, springing at intervals to the height of fifty or even ninety feet.  In these hot springs, which formerly served to baptize their Pagan ancestors, the Icelanders boil their vegetables, meat, eggs, and other articles of food; but it is necessary to cover the pot suspended in these steaming waters, in order to prevent the volcanic odor from imparting a taste to their contents.  Iceland is not so barren as you might imagine from its extreme cold, for gardening is cultivated throughout the island:  but there are no large trees.”