THE GEYSERS. 
113 
the other side of the river, more dead than alive, 
through fear and cold. Our party followed, and 
was equally fortunate in getting over without any 
accident, (except the wetting of the luggage and 
ourselves,) though the water reached to the mid¬ 
dle of the body of our tallest horses. Here, after 
procuring us some milk from a cottage close by, 
the priest took his leave of us. In the vicinity of 
the house were two or three boiling springs, 
which were used by the inhabitants for the pur¬ 
pose of cooking, as well as for that of washing their 
clothes. At a few miles distance, on our right, 
we saw a very considerable column of steam, 
rising from the marshes, at a place which the 
guides called Reykum *, and which they said I 
might visit on my way to Skalholt. Our journey 
now lay either entirely over a morass, which 
proved extremely fatiguing to our horses, or upon 
the edge of it, where a quantity of loose soil had 
been washed down from the mountains by the tor¬ 
rents, and was scarcely more firm. At about five 
o’clock in the afternoon we obtained the first view 
of the mountain, called Laugerfell , from which 
the Geysers spring. It is of no great elevation, 
* This is not the Reykum , or Rykum, which Sir John Stan- 
ley has given so full and so admirable an account of: many 
places are called by this and similar names, derived from 
the Icelandic word Reik, or Reyk, which signifies smoke $ 
such are Reykholt > Reikevig, Reikholtsdal, Reikanaes , 3?c. 
I 
