176 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



lava, tossed about like the ruins of a world, and washed by waters as 

 bright and green as polished malachite. Beyond, a bevy of distant 

 mountains, robed by the transparent atmosphere in tints unknown to 

 Europe, peeped over each other's shoulders into the silver mirror at 

 their feet; while here and there, from among their purple ridges, 

 columns of white vapour rose like altar-smoke toward the tranquil 

 heaven" 



"We now follow the party to the spot which has ever been the centre 

 of attraction with visitors to Iceland — the locality of the Geysirs. 



"I do not know," writes his lordship, " that I can give you a 

 better notion of the place than by saying that it looked as if, for about 

 a quarter of a mile, the ground had been honey-combed by disease into 

 numerous sores and orifices. 'Not a blade of grass grew on its hot and 

 inflamed surface, which consisted of unwholesome-looking red clay, 

 or crumpled shreds and shards of slough-like incrustations. IS'aturally 

 enough, our first impulse on dismounting was to scamper off at once to 

 the great Geysir. As it lay at the farthest end of a congeries of hot 

 springs, in order to reach it we had to run the gauntlet of all the pools 

 of boiling water, and scalding quagmires of soft clay, that intervened, 

 and consequently arrived at the spot with our ancles nicely poulticed. 

 But the occasion justified our eagerness. A smooth, siliceous basin, 

 seventy-two feet in diameter and four feet deep, with a hole at the 

 bottom as in a washing-basin on board a steamer, stood before us, 

 brimful of water just upon the simmer; while up into the air above 

 our heads rose a great column of vapour, looking as if it was going to 

 turn into the fisherman's Genie. The ground about the brim was com- 

 posed of layers of incrusted silica, like the outside of an oyster-shell, 

 sloping gently down on all sides from the edge of the basin." 



Section of a Geysir. A. Basin, B. Funnel. 



