THE ISLAND. 19 



delicately tinted cavern, with bossy walls, full to the brim 

 with boiling water, which is as clear as crystal, and 

 entirely devoid of taste or smell. This is the favourite 

 cooking-pot of travellers. It makes admirable tea ; and 

 we anchored in its depths sundry tin cans and sausages, 

 whose flavour afterwards seemed exquisite to our hungry 

 palates. 



This fountain was at one time the chief eruptor, but 

 after an sarthquake it ceased to play, and made over 

 the performance to the Great Geyser, which then began. 



The " Great Geyser " has built up for itself a truncated 

 conical mound, by the deposit of the silicious material so 

 largely held in suspension by its waters. 



On the summit of this mound stands the saucer-shaped 

 basin, in the centre of which the crater or pipe opens. 

 The basin is about four feet deep at the edge of the 

 crater, but shallows gradually to the lip. It measures 

 above seventy feet across, and the pipe is about ten feet in 

 diameter, and perfectly smooth within, where it has been 

 polished by the constant rush of the boiling water. The 

 basin is always full, except for a short interval after an 

 eruption, when it is emptied, and then you can walk into 

 the edge of the crater, over the hot stone, and look down 

 the pipe at the fiercely boiling flood, filling gradually up 

 again to its old level. 



When full the basin looks very beautiful, from the 

 clearness of the water and the deep blue colour of the 

 pipe. The water is always boiling, and large bubbles of 

 air rise to the surface from the unknown regions below. 



