after having seen the engravings made from
drawings taken by the last-mentioned gentleman,
to mistake it. A vast circular
mound, (of a substance which, I believe,
was first ascertained to be siliceous by
Professor Bergman,) was elevated a considerable
height above those that surrounded
most of the other springs. It was of a
brownish grey color, made rugged on its
exterior, but more especially near the margin
of the basin, by numerous hillocks of the
same siliceous substance, varying in size, but
generally about as large as a mole-hill,
their surface rough with minute tubercles,
and covered all over with a most beautiful
kind of efflorescence; so that the appearance
of these hillocks has been aptly compared to
that of the head of a cauliflower. On reachingo:
the top of this siliceous mound, I looked into
Banks in his voyage to Staffa and Iceland: the work is
too well known to every one. The two excellent letters
of Sir John Stanley on the hot-springs near Rykum, and
on those near Haukardal, are to be found in the third
volume of the Transactions of the Society of Edinburgh.
In the same volume, also, is to he met with a full account
of the analysis of the water of the hot-springs, by the. late
Dr. Black, of Edinburgh.
THE GEYSERS.
the perfectly circular basin*, which gradually
shelved down to the mouth of the pipe or
crater in the centre, whence the water issued.
This mouth lay about four or five feet
below the edge of the basin, and proved, on
my afterwards measuring it, to be as nearly
as possible seventeen feet distant from it on
every side; the greatest difference in the distance
not being more than a foot. The inside
was not rugged, like the outside; but apparently
even, although rough to the touch,
like a coarse file: it wholly wanted the little
hillocks and the efflorescence of the exterior,
and was merely covered with innumerable
small tubercles, which, of themselves,
were in many places rendered quite smooth
and polished by the falling of the water upon
them. It was not possible now to enter the
basin, for it was filled nearly to the edge with
water the most pellucid I ever beheld, in the
centre of which was observable a slight ebullition,
and a large, but not dense, body of steam,
which, however, increased both in quantity
* To compare great things with small, the shape of
this basin resembles that of a saucer with a round hole in
its middle.