78 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. [VII. 



The spectacle was certainly magnificent ; but no descrip- 

 tion can give any idea of its most striking features. The 

 enormous wealth of water, its vitality, its hidden power, — 

 the illimitable breadth of sunlit vapour, rolling out in ex- 

 haustless profusion, — all combined to make one feel the 

 stupendous energy of nature's slightest movements. 



And yet I do not believe the exhibition was so fine as 

 some that have been seen : from the first burst upwards to 

 the moment the last jet retreated into the pipe, was no more 

 than a space of seven or eight minutes, and at no moment 

 did the crown of the column reach higher than sixty or 

 seventy feet above the surface of the basin. Now, early 

 travellers talk of three hundred feet, which must, of course, 

 be fabulous ; but many trustworthy persons have judged the 

 eruptions at two hundred feet, while well-authenticated 

 accounts — when the elevation of the jet has been actually 

 measured — make it to have attained a height of upwards of 

 one hundred feet. 



With regard to the internal machinery by which these 

 waterworks are set in motion, I will only say that the most 

 received theory seems to be that which supposes the exist- 

 ence of a chamber in the heated earth, almost, but not quite, 

 filled with water, and communicating with the upper air by 

 means of a pipe, whose lower orifice, instead of being in the 

 roof, is at the side of the cavern, and below the surface of 

 the subterranean pond. The water kept by the surrounding 

 furnaces at boiling point, generates of course a continuous 

 supply of steam, for which some vent must be obtained ; as 

 it cannot escape by the funnel, — the lower mouth of which 

 is under water, — it squeezes itself up within the arching roof, 

 until at last, compressed beyond all endurance, it strains 

 against the rock, and pushing down the intervening waters 

 with its broad, strong back, forces them below the level of 

 the funnel, and dispersing part, and driving part before it, 

 rushes forth in triumph to the upper air. The fountains, 

 therefore, that we see mounting to the sky during an eruption, 

 are nothing but the superincumbent mass of waters in the 



