SPRINGS. 273 



' At the end of time 



The vapours rage (geysar), 

 And playful flames 

 Involve the skies." 



Ari Frode, the first historiographer of the north, who flourished in the eleventh century, 

 was educated within a mile of the Geysers, yet makes no mention of them ; nor are they 

 referred to by a native Icelander, till the time of Svenson, bishop of Skalpolt, in the 

 seventeenth century. But no argument can be founded upon this fact, to prove that 



The Great Geyser. 



the boiling fountains were not in full play when the first Norwegian colonists took pos- 

 session of the soil, in the ninth century, more than that Herculaneum and Pompeii were 

 not overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79, because Pliny, who saw the 

 volcano explode, who lost his uncle by it, and minutely describes the event, omits all 

 notice of the buried cities one of the most unaccountable circumstances in the range of 

 history. 



The explanation of these great efforts of nature, given by Mr. Lyell, is simple and 

 ingenious, founded upon the general supposition of a subterranean cavity where water 



and steam collect, and where the free escape of the 

 steam is prevented till it acquires sufficient force 

 to discharge the water. He supposes water from 

 the surface of the earth to penetrate into the cavity 

 A D by the fissures F F ; while at the same time 

 steam, at an extremely high temperature, rises up- 

 wards through the fissures c c. When the steam 

 reaches the cavity, a portion of it is at first con- 

 densed into water; and it gradually raises the 





temperature of the water already there, till at last the lower part of the cavity is filled 

 with boiling water, and the upper part with steam under high pressure. As the pressure 



of the steam increases, its expansive force becomes greater ; and at length it forces the 



T 



