gather any sort of interpretation of them, because owing to the hollow
space of the graving being partly smeared up with mud and partly worn by
the feet of travellers in the trampling of the road, the long line that
had been drawn became blurred. Hence it is plain that crevices, even in
the solid rock, if long drenched with wet, become choked either by the
solid washings of dirt or the moistening drip of showers.

But since this country, by its closeness of language as much as of
position, includes Sweden and Norway, I will record their divisions and
their climates also as I have those of Denmark. These territories, lying
under the northern pole, and facing Bootes and the Great Bear, reach
with their utmost outlying parts the latitude of the freezing zone; and
beyond these the extraordinary sharpness of the cold suffers not human
habitation. Of these two, Norway has been allotted by the choice of
nature a forbidding rocky site. Craggy and barren, it is beset all
around by cliffs, and the huge desolate boulders give it the aspect of
a rugged and a gloomy land; in its furthest part the day-star is not
hidden even by night; so that the sun, scorning the vicissitudes of day
and night, ministers in unbroken presence an equal share of his radiance
to either season.

On the west of Norway comes the island called Iceland, with the mighty
ocean washing round it: a land very squalid to dwell in, but noteworthy
for marvels, both strange occurrences and objects that pass belief. A
spring is there which, by the malignant reek of its water, destroys the
original nature of anything whatsoever. Indeed, all that is sprinkled
with the breath of its vapour is changed into the hardness of stone.
It remains a doubt whether it be more marvellous or more perilous, that
soft and flowing water should be invested with such a stiffness, as by a
sudden change to transmute into the nature of stone whatsoever is put to