| Show CEl TAND LOSING population I 1 after ji thousand years yeara of occupation I 1 11 7 1 the people are migrating Therie the news ws from iceland brought by the gloucester fishing schooner magpie I 1 B P mckenzie recently will interest all in n any way acquainted with that far off northern island says the boston traveller Icela iceland iid as aa many americana S are re aware has long been een losing in population and the captain of the schooner referred to is the authority for the tg statement ilat ement that chat it is now suffer in ingmore in this respect than ever be forey forest felly fifteen hundred people he be to leave the j island this year fo r e Gan adlan northwest a ana ni as aa them the canadian government will pay their passage and in other ways enable them to settle in new and more desirable homes the exodus is likely to continue a at ta i lively rate until only a few thousand Ic elanders are left in the bleak seats of their little division of the gothic family population twenty years ago was only about seventy thou thousand saud and can therefore ill afford to lose any 0 of fits its people still the icelander cannot be blamed for wishing to emigrate to a more congenial climate comparatively little of the island is favorable to agriculture the climate which has always been severe is much ciuch more rigo rigorous than formerly and bereit were it not for its teeming fisheries it could hardly support a third of its inhabitants it is not strange then that much as they are attached to the land and of their birth Ic elanders are leaving it in large numbers and as they are a hardy industrious and law abiding people the dominion does wisely to hold out strong inducements to them to make their home on its soil it is biow now over a thousand years since since iceland was discovered and settled by the norwegians Norwegia ns and its people who speak what norwegian philologists call old norse are norsemen norseman Nor semen pure and simple it is to iceland which formerly especially in the eleventh century was the seat of much literary activity that wo we largely owe the preservation of norse mythology and carlyle Carly lem may ay well remark much would be lost had iceland not been burst up from the sea cea not been discovered by the north |
