LIFE “AL FKESCO.” 
121 
energies. Two or three times the cannonading we had 
heard immediately after onr arrival recommenced,— 
and once an eruption to the height of about ten feet 
occurred; but so brief was its duration, that by the 
time we were on the spot, although the tent was not 
eighty yards distant, all was over. As after every effort 
of the fountain the water in the basin mysteriously 
ebbs back into the funnel, this performance, though 
unsatisfactory in itself, gave us an opportunity of ap¬ 
proaching the mouth of the pipe, and looking down 
into its scalded gullet. In an hour afterwards, the 
basin was brimful as ever. 
Tethered down by our curiosity to a particular 
spot for an indefinite period, we had to while away the 
hours as best we could. We played chess, collected 
specimens, photographed the encampment, the guides, 
the ponies, and one or two astonished natives. Every 
now and then we went out shooting over the neighbour¬ 
ing flats, and once I ventured on a longer expedition 
among the mountains to our left. The views I got were 
beautiful,—ridge rising beyond ridge in eternal silence, 
like gigantic ocean waves, whose tumult has been sud¬ 
denly frozen into stone;—but the dread of the Geysir 
