the perfectly circular basin*, which gradually shelved down to the mouth of the pipe or crater in the centre, whence the water issued. This mouth lay about four or five feet below the edge of the basin, and proved, on my afterwards measuring it, to be as nearly as possible seventeen feet distant from it on every side; the greatest difference in the distance not being more than a foot. The inside was not rugged, like the outside; but apparently even, although rough to the touch, like a coarse file: it wholly wanted the little hillocks and the efflorescence of the exterior, and was merely covered with innumerable small tubercles, which, of themselves, were in many places rendered quite smooth. and polished by the falling of the water upon them. It was not possible now to enter the basin, for it was filled nearly to the edge with water the most pellucid I ever beheld, in the centre of which was observable a slight ebullition, and a large, but not dense, body of steam, which, however,, increased both in quantity * To compare great things with small, the shape of this basin resembles that of a saucer with a round hole in its middle. and density from time to time, as often as the ebullition was more violent. At nine o'clock I heard a hollow subterraneous noise, which was thrice repeated in the course of a few moments; the two last reports following each other more quickly than the first and second had done. It exactly resembled the distant firing of cannon, and was accompanied each time with a perceptible, though very slight, shaking of the earth; immediately after which, the boiling of the water increased together with the steam, and the whole was violently agitated. At first, the water only rolled without much noise over the edge of the basin, but this was almost instantly followed by a jet*, which did not rise above ten or twelve feet, and merely forced up the water in the centre of the basin, but was attended with a loud roaring explosion: this jet fell as soon as it had reached its greatest * I have followed Sir John Stanley in using the word jet for this sudden shooting of the water into the air, which continues but a few seconds, because I do not know that we have any term more applicable in our language. The French employ the word élancement in the same sense, which seems to convey a better idea of the thing, but cannot well be rendered in English. height, and then the water flowed over the margin still more than before, and in less than half a minute a second jet was thrown up in a similar manner to the former. Another overflowing of the water succeeded, after which it immediately rushed down about three-fourths of the way into the basin. This was the only discharge of the Geyser that happened this evening. Some one or other of the springs near us was continually boiling; but none was sufficiently remarkable to take off my attention from the Geyser, by the side of which I remained nearly the whole night, in anxious but vain expectation of witnessing more eruptions. It was observed to us by an old woman, who lives in a cottage at a short distance from the hotsprings, that the eruptions of the Geyser are much most frequent, when there is a clear and dry atmosphere, which generally attends a northerly wind; and we now congratulated ourselves upon the prospect of being enabled to ascertain the accuracy of her observation, the wind, which had hitherto continued to the south-west, having this evening veered about to the north. At twenty minutes past eleven Friday, on the following morning, I was July 14. apprised of an approaching eruption by subterraneous noises and shocks of the ground, similar to those which I had heard and felt the preceding day; but the noises were repeated several times, and at uncertain, though quickly recurring, intervals. I could only compare them to the distant firing from a fleet of ships on a rejoicing day, when the cannon are discharged without regularity, now singly, and now two or three almost at the same moment. I was standing at the time on the brink of the basin, but was soon obliged to retire a few steps by the heaving of the water in the middle, and the consequent flowing of its agitated surface over the margin, which happened three separate times in about as many minutes. A few seconds only had elapsed, when the first jet took place, and this had scarcely subsided before it was succeeded by a second, and then by a third, which last was by far the most magnificent, rising in a body that appeared to us to reach not less than ninety feet in height, and to be in its lower part nearly as wide as the basin itself, which is fifty-one feet in diameter. The bottom of it was a prodigious body of white foam, magnificent beyond what the warmest imagination could picture, and by concealment rendering more impressive the wonders it envelopped; but, higher up, amidst the vast clouds of steam that had burst from the pipe, the water was at intervals discoverable, mounting in a compact column, which at a still greater elevation, where it was full in view, burst into innumerable long and narrow streamlets of spray, some of which were shot to a vast height in the air in a perpendicular direction, while others were thrown out from the side, diagonally, to a prodigious distance. The excessive transparency of the body of water, and the brilliancy of the * Darwin, in his Botanic Garden, vol. i page 128, has a few lines upon the Geyser, which are rather more poetical than correct: High in the frozen north where Hecla glows, And shoots red stars amid the ebon night; 1 |