the torrent, where the noise was really deafening; and it was not without the greatest difficulty we succeeded in making them obey the reins, and bear us through the foaming waves by which the bridge was washed.”  Either the scene has greatly altered since Madame Pfeiffer’s visit, or her imagination has considerably over-coloured its principal features.  That is, if we accept the accounts of recent travellers, and especially that of Captain Burton, who has laboured so successfully to reduce the romance of Icelandic travel to plain matter of fact.

[Great Geysir:  page153.jpg]

The Geysirs lie within a comparatively limited area, and consist of various specimens, differing considerably in magnitude.  The basin of the Great Geysir lies on a gentle elevation, about ten feet above the plain; it measures about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, while that of the seething caldron is ten feet.  Both caldron and basin, on the occasion of Madame Pfeiffer’s visit, were full to the brim with crystal-clear water in a state of slight ebullition.  At irregular intervals a column of water is shot perpendicularly upwards from the centre of the caldron, the explosion being always preceded by a low rumbling; but she was not so fortunate as to witness one of these eruptions.  Lord Dufferin, however, after three days’ watch, was rewarded for his patience.  The usual underground thunder having been heard, he and his friends rushed to the spot.  A violent agitation was convulsing the centre of the pool.  Suddenly a crystal dome lifted itself up to the height of eight or ten feet, and then fell; immediately after which, a shining liquid column, or rather a sheaf of columns, wreathed in robes of vapour, sprang into the air, and in a succession of jerking leaps, each higher than its predecessor, flung their silver crests against the sky.  For a few minutes the fountain held its own, then all at once appeared to lose its ascending power.  The unstable waters faltered, drooped, fell, “like a broken purpose,” back upon themselves, and were immediately absorbed in the depths of the subterranean shaft.

About one hundred and forty yards distant is the Strokkr, or “churn,” with a basin about seven feet wide in its outer, and eighteen feet in its inner diameter.  A funnel or inverted cone in shape, whereas the Great Geysir is a mound and a cylinder, it gives the popular idea of a crater.  Its surface is “an ugly area of spluttering and ever boiling water.”  It frequently “erupts,” and throws a spout into the air, sometimes as high as forty or fifty feet, the outbursts lasting from ten to thirty minutes.  Madame Pfeiffer had not the luck to see it in its grandest moods; the highest eruption she saw did not rise above thirty feet, nor last more than fifteen minutes.  An eruption can be produced by throwing into the caldron a sufficient quantity of turf or stones.