116 
LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
had been honey-combed by disease into numerous sores 
and orifices ; not a blade of grass grew on its hot, 
inflamed surface, which consisted of unwholesome look¬ 
ing red livid 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 furthest end 
of the 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 on the spot with 
our ancles nicely poulticed. But the occasion justified 
our eagerness. A smooth silicious 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 
