he lava, after flowing for
several days, was precipitated 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 third of August, fresh floods of lava still pouring from the
volcano, a new branch was sent off in a different 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 southeast direction, and
discharged itself into the bed of the river Hverfisfliot, where a scene
of destruction scarcely inferior to the former was occasioned. These
Icelandic lavas (like the ancient streams which are met with in
Auvergne, and other provinces of Central France), are stated by
Stephenson to have accumulated 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 takes its rise. This
affords a parallel case to one which can be shown to have happened at a
remote era in the volcanic region of the Vivarais in France, where lava
issued from the cone of Thueyts, and while one branch ran down, another
more powerful stream flowed up the channel of the river Ardeche.

The sides of the valley of the Skapta present superb ranges of basaltic
columns of older lava, resembling those which are laid open in the
valleys descending from Mont Dor, in Auvergne, where more modern
lava-currents, on a scale very inferior in magnitude to those of
Iceland, have also usurped the beds of the existing rivers. The eruption
of Skaptar Jokul did not entirely cease till the end of two years; and
when Mr. Paulson visited the tract eleven years afterwards, in 1794, he
found columns of smoke still rising from parts of the lava, and several
rents filled with hot water.[585]

Although the population of Iceland was very much scattered, and did not
exceed fifty thousand, no less than twenty villages were destroyed,
besides those inundated by water; and more than nine thousand human
beings perished, togethe