when a
small island was thrown up near Cape Reykianes, on the southern coast of
Iceland, and sank again after a year.[293] Midway between Iceland and
Greenland there appears to have stood, in the Middle Ages, a small
volcanic island discovered by that Gunnbjoern who first went to
Greenland. It was known as Gunnbjoern's Skerries, and was described by
Ivar Bardsen.[294] This island is no longer above the surface, and its
fate is recorded upon Ruysch's map of the world in the 1508 edition of
Ptolemy: "Insula haec anno Domini 1456 fuit totaliter combusta,"--this
island was entirely burnt (i. e. blown up in an eruption) in 1456; and
in later maps Mr. Major has found the corrupted name "Gombar Scheer"
applied to the dangerous reefs and shoals left behind by this
explosion.[295] Where volcanic action is declining geysers and boiling
springs are apt to abound, as in Iceland; where it has become extinct at
a period geologically recent, as in Auvergne and the Rhine country, its
latest vestiges are left in the hundreds of thermal and mineral springs
whither fashionable invalids congregate to drink or to bathe.[296] Now
in Greenland, at the present day, hot springs are found, of which the
most noted are those on the island of Ounartok, at the entrance to the
fiord of that name. These springs seem to be the same that were
described five hundred years ago by Ivar Bardsen. As to volcanoes, it
has been generally assumed that those of Greenland are all extinct; but
in a country as yet so imperfectly studied this only means that
eruptions have not been recorded.[297] On the whole, it seems to me that
the mention, in our Venetian narrative, of a boiling spring and an
active volcano in Greenland is an instance of the peculiar sort--too
strange to have been invented, but altogether probable in itself--that
adds to the credit of the narrative.

[Footnote 293: Daubeny, _Description of Active and Extinct
Volcanoes_, London, 1848, pp. 307; cf. Judd, _Volcanoes_,
London, 1881, p. 234.]

[Footnote 294: "Ab Snefelsneso Islandiae, qua brevissimus in
Gronlandiam trajectus est, duorum dierum et duarum noctium
spatio navigandum est recto cursu versus occidentem; ibique
Gunnbjoernis scopulos invenies, inter Gronlandiam et Islandiam
medio situ interjacentes. Hic cursus antiquitus frequentabatur,
nunc vero glacies ex recessu oceani euroaquilonari delata
scopulos a