CATARACTS AND INUNDATIONS. 15? 



which was exceedingly well tasted. Our cookery at Rykum had 

 not beeu quite so successful. 



The water thrown out from the Geyser is joined at the bottom 

 of the mound by that which flows from the spring called the roaring 

 Geyzer, formerly described. The stream produced by their united 

 waters flows three or four hundred paces before it falls into the river, 

 where its temperature is reduced to 72. Even at this place it 

 deposited much of the substances it contained ; but during the whole 

 of its course, the plants growing on its banks were covered with 

 beautiful incrustations. Some of these we wished to preserve, but 

 from their extreme delicacy they fell into pieces on every attempt to 

 remove them. 



The situation of the new Geyzer* is in the same line from the 

 foot of the hill with the great Geyzer. Its pipe is formed with 

 equal regularity, and is six feet in diameter, and forty.six feet 

 ten inches in depth. It does not open into a bason, but it is nearly 

 surrounded by a rim or wall two feet high, After each eruption, 

 the pipe is emptied, and t!ie water returns gradually into it as into 

 that of the old Geyzer. During three hours nearly that the pipe is 

 filling, the partial eruptions happen seldom, and do not rise very 

 high; but Hie water boils the whole time, and often with great 

 violence. The temperature of ihe waters after one of these eruptions, 

 was constantly found to bei>!2. Few incrustations are formed 

 round this spring, excepting in the channel where the water flows 

 from it. 



The great eruption is not preceded by any noise, like that of the 

 great Geyzer. The water boils suddenly, or is heaved over the 



* Before the month of June 1789, the year I vuited Iceland, this spring had 

 not played with any degree of violence, nt least for a considerable time. (In- 

 deed (he formation of the pipe will hot allow us to suppose, that its eruptions 

 had at no former period been violent.) But in the month of June, this quarter 

 of Iceland had suffered some very severe shocks of an earthquake ; and it is not 

 unlikely, that many of ihe cavities communicating with the bottom of the pipe 

 had been then enlarged, and new sources of water opened into them. The 

 difference between the eruptions of this fountain, and those of the great Gey- 

 2er, maybe accounted for from the circumstance of there being no bason over 

 the pipe of the first, in which any water can be contained to interrupt the co- 

 lumn as it rises. I should here state, that we could not discover any corres- 

 pondence between the eruption* of the different springs. 



