not separated by an interval of more than half a mile from higher mountains. The north side is perpendicular, barren, and craggy; the opposite one rises with a tolerably gradual ascent, and from this near its base, we saw a number of columns of steam mounting to various heights. We quickened our pace, and at eight o'clock arrived at the foot of the hill. Here I left my horses, &c. to the care of the guides, and hastened among the boiling springs, happy in the prospect of soon beholding what may justly be considered as one of the most extraordinary operations of nature. The lower part of the hill was formed into a number of mounds, composed of what appeared to be clay or coarse bolus, of various sizes: some of them were yellowish white, but the greater number of the colour of dull red brick. Interspersed with them here and there, lay pieces of rock, which had rolled, or been washed down by the rains, from the higher parts of the mountain. On these mounds, at irregular distances, and on all sides of me, were the apertures of boiling springs, from some of which were issuing spouts of water, from one to four feet in height; while in others, the water rose no higher than the top of the basin, or gently flowed over the margin. The orifices were of various dimensions, and either covered on their sides and edge with a brownish siliceous crust, or the water only boiled through a hole in the mound, and became turbid by admixture with the soil, which coloured it either with red, dirty yellow, or gray. Upon the heated ground, in many places, were some extremely beautiful, though small, specimens of sulphuric efflorescence, the friability of which was such, that, in spite of the utmost care, I was not capable of preserving any in a good state. I did not remain long in this spot, but directed my steps to the loftiest column of steam, which I naturally concluded arose from the fountain that is alone, by way of distinction called the Geyser. It lies at the opposite extremity of this collection of springs, and I should think full half a quarter of a mile distant from the outermost ones which I first arrived at. Among numerous small ones, I passed three or four apertures of a considerable size, but all so much inferior to the one I was now approaching, that they scarcely need any farther notice. It was impossible, after having read the admirable descriptions of the Geyser, given by the Archbishop Von Troil and Sir John Stanley, and especially after having seen the engra

*

I need scarcely refer my readers for a more full account of the Geyser than it is in my power to give, to the letters of Von Troil, who accompanied Sir Joseph Banks in his voyage to Staffa and Iceland: the work is too well known to every one. The two excellent letters of Sir John Stanley on the hot springs near Rykum, and on those near Haukardal, are to be found in the third volume of the Transactions of the Society of Edinburgh. In the same volume, also, is to be met with a full account of the analysis of the water of the hot springs, by the late Dr. Black, of Edinburgh.

vings made from drawings taken by the last-mentioned gentleman, to mistake it. A vast circular mound (of a substance which I believe was first ascertained to be siliceous by Professor Bergman,) was elevated a considerable height above those that surrounded most of the other springs. It was of a brownish gray colour, made rugged on its exterior, but more especially near the margin of the basin, by numerous hillocks of the same siliceous substance, varying in size, but generally about as large as a molehill, rough with minute tubercles, and covered all over with a most beautiful kind of efflorescence; so that the appearance of these hillocks has been aptly compared to that of the head of a cauliflower. On reaching the top of this siliceous mound, I looked into 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 polished smooth 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 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; almost 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,f which did not rise above ten

To compare great things with small, the shape of this basin resembles that of a saucer with a circular hole in its middle.

† I have followed Sir John Stanley in using the word jet for the 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 secins to convey a better idea of the thing, but cannot well be made into English.

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 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 lived in a cottage at a short distance from the hot springs, 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 had the good fortune of being enabled to ascertain the accuracy of her observations, the wind, which had hitherto continued to the south-west, having this evening veered about to the north. At twenty minutes past eleven on the following morning, I was apprised of an approaching eruption by subterraneous noises and shocks of the ground, similar to those which I had felt the preceding day; but the noises were repeated several times, and at uncertain, though quick recurring intervals. I could only compare them to the distant firing from a fleet of ships on a rejoicing day, when the cannon are sometimes discharged singly and sometimes 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. I had waited here but a few seconds, 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 column 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; higher up, amidst the vast clouds of steam that had burst from the pipe, the water was seen mounting in a compact column, which at a still greater elevation, burst into innumerable long and narrow streamlets of spray, that were either shot to a vast height in the air in a perpendicular direction, or

thrown out from the side, diagonally, to a prodigious distance.* The excessive transparency of the body of water, and the brilliancy of the drops as the sun shone through them, considerably added to the beauty of the spectacle. As soon as the fourth jet was thrown out, which was much less than the former, and scarcely at the interval of two minutes from the first, the water sunk rapidly in the basin, with a rushing noise, and nothing was to be seen but the column of steam, which had been continually increasing from the commencement of the eruption, and was now ascending perpendicularly to an amazing height, as there was scarcely any wind, expanding in bulk as it rose, but decreasing in density, till the upper part of the column gradually lost itself in the surrounding atmosphere. I could now walk in the basin to the margin of the pipe, down which the water had sunk about ten feet, but it still boiled, and every now and then furiously, and with a great noise, rose a few feet higher in the pipe, then again subsided, and remained for a short time quiet. This continued to be the case for some hours. I measured the pipe, and

* Darwin, in his Botanic Garden, vol. i. page 123, has a few lines upon the Geyser, which are rather more poetical than correct:

"High in the frozen north where Hecla glows,
And melts in torrents his coeval snows;
O'er isles and oceans sheds a sanguine light,
And shoots red stars amid the ebon night;

When, at his base entombed, with bellowing sound
Fell Geyser roar'd and struggling, shook the ground;
Pour'd from red nostrils, with her scalding breath,
A boiling deluge o'er the blasted heath;

And wide in air its misty volumes hurl'd
Contagious atoms o'er the alarmed world:

Nymphs, your bold myriads broke the infernal spell,
And crush'd the sorceress in her flinty cell."

In these two last lines the Doctor alludes, as he tells us in a note, to the eruption of a volcano which happened subsequently to the time of Sir Joseph Banks' being there, and which extended as far as the Geysers, and overflowed them with its lava. Whence he could have obtained this piece of information, I am at a loss to guess: certainly it was not from any book of good authority, for no such circumstance has happened. This reminds me of a similar error in Dr. Adam's Geography, where it is said that Hecla is constantly spouting out fire and hot water, and with regard to the religion of the Icelanders, that most of them are Lutherans, but that there are some Pagans. The Tatsroed, who possesses a very mild temper, which I never saw ruffled even in trying cir *cumstances, was still unable to restrain himself when he pointed out these inaccuracies to me, and denied the veracity of them, with considerable warmth: quoting passages from English authors who had written previously to the time of Dr. Adam, and who had stated the facts as they really were. He beg. ged me, on my return, to make Dr. Adam acquainted with the incorrectness of his remarks upon Iceland, that they might be altered in a future edition of his work. But the time is past; for the worthy Doctor is dead ;-" Requiescat in pace."

found it to be exactly seventeen feet over, and, as I have before mentioned, situated in the very centre of the basin, which was fifty-one feet in diameter. The pipe opens into the basin, with a widened mouth, and then gradually contracts for about two or three feet, where it becomes quite cylindrical, and descends vertically to the depth, according to Povelsen and Olafsen, of between fifty and sixty feet. Its sides are smooth, and covered with the same siliceous incrustation as the basin. It was full twenty minutes after the sinking of the water from the basin, before I was able to sit down in it or to bear my hands upon it without burning myself. At half past two o'clock it was again nearly filled, the water having risen gradually, but at intervals, attended every now and then with a sudden jet, which, however did not throw it more than two or three feet higher than the rim of the basin. A few minutes after, there was a slight eruption, but the greatest elevation to which the water was ejected was not above twelve feet. At four o'clock in the afternoon my guide was witness to another, while I was away. I had been visiting the other hot springs, and, amongst them, that which Sir John Stanley calls the Roaring Geyser, in which, though the water rose and fell several feet at uncertain intervals, and was frequently boiling with a loud and roaring noise, I still did not perceive that it ever flowed over the margin of the aperture. Its pipe, or well, does not descend perpendicularly, but after going down some way in a sloping direction, seems to continue in a nearly horrizontal course. Around its mouth lies a considerable quantity of red earth, or bolus, and on one side of it I observed, what appeared to me, a curious mineralogical production: it was imbedded in a hard kind of rock, but was of itself exceedingly brittle, and apparently fibrous; looking much like asbestos, but materially differing from that mineral in its extremely fragile nature. On going to the foot of the hill, near the spot where the waters of the Geyser join a cold stream, among the numerous rills which the heated water had formed, I met with some uncommonly beautiful specimens of incrustations. Every blade of grass and every leaf or moss that was washed by these waters, was clothed with a thin covering of the same siliceous substance as the great basin was composed of, but of so delicate a nature that it was scarcely possible, even with the utmost care, to bring any of them away perfect. I remarked, in particular, a Jungermannia (asplenioides) so beautifully coated with this incrustation, that it looked as if it were a model of the plant in plaster of Paris. One specimen was so protected under the shelter of larger plants incrusted together, that I was able to convey it in safety to Reikevig. The plants I met with by the side of the river, which I had not remarked before, were Carex Bellardi and a new spe