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 Gej sirs. 
" 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. Naturally 
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 » (jcybir. A. Basin. B. Fmiucl. 
