CATARACTS, AND INUN DAT1 O If S. 133 



a minute account of those which, next to them, were deserving of 

 notice* The springs in general resemble those at Rykum ; but there 

 are five or six which have their peculiarities, and throw up their 

 waters with violence to a considerable height. Their basons are of 

 irregular forms, four, five or six feet in diameter, "and from some 

 of them the water rushes out in all directions, from others oblique. 

 ly. The eruptions are never of long duration, and the intervals 

 are from IS to 30 minutes. The periods of both were exceeding y 

 variable. One of the most remarkable of these springs threw out a 

 great quantity of water, and from its continual noise we named it 

 the Roaring Geyzer. The eruptions of this fountain were incessant. 

 The water darted out with fury every four or five minutes, and 

 covered a great space of ground with the matter it deposited. The 

 jets were from thirty to forty feet in height. They were shivered 

 into the finest particles of spray, and surrounded by great clouds 

 of steam. The situation of this spring was eighty yards distant from 

 the Geyzer, on the rise of the hill. 



I shall now, Sir, attempt some description of this celebrated foun. 

 tain, distinguished by the appellation of Geyzer alone, from the 

 pre-eminence it holds over all the natural phenomena of this kind 

 in Iceland. 



By a gradual deposition of the substances dissolved in its water 

 for a long succession of years, perhaps for ages, a mound of con- 

 siderable height has been formed, from the centre of which the 

 Geyzer issues. It rises through a perpendicular and cylindrical 

 pipe, or shaft, seventy feet in depth, and eight feet and a half in 

 diameter, which opens into a bason or funnel, measuihig fifty-nine 

 feet from one edge of it to the other. The bason is circular, and 

 the sides of it, as well as those of the pipe, are polished quite 

 smooth by the continual friction of the water, and they are both 

 formed with such mathematical truth, as to appear constructed by 

 art. The declivity of the mound begins immediately from the bor- 

 ders of the bason. The incrustations are in some places Worn 

 smooth by the overflowing of the water; in most, however, they 

 rise in numberless little tufts, which bear a resemblance to the heads 

 of cauliflowers, except that they are rather more prominent, and 

 are covered, by the falling of the finer particles of spray, with a 

 crystalline etflorescence so delicate as scarcely to bear the slightest 

 touch. Unmolested, the efflorescence giaduaily hardens, and 



K 3 



