seventeen feet over, and, as I have before
mentioned, situated in the very centre of the
basin, which was fifty-one feet in diameter.
The pipe opens into the basin with a widened
mouth, and then gradually contracts for about
two or three feet, where it becomes quite cylindrical,
and descends vertically to the depth,
according to Povelsen and Olafsen, of between
fifty and sixty feet. Its sides are smooth, and
covered with the same siliceous incrustation
as the basin. It was full twenty minutes after
the sinking of the water, from the basin,
before I was able to sit down in it, or to bear
my hands upon it without burning myself.
At half past two o’clock it was again nearly
filled, the water having risen gradually, but
at intervals, attended every now and then
with a sudden jet, which, however, did not
throw it more than two or three feet higher
than the rim of the basin. A few minutes
after, there was a slight eruption, but the
greatest elevation to which the water was
ejected, was not above twelve feet. At four
o’clock in the afternoon my guide was witness
to another, while I was away. I had ■7 .. K J
been visiting the other hot-springs, and,
amongst them, that which Sir John Stanley
calls the Roaring Geyser, in which, though
the water rose and fell several feet at uncertain
intervals, and was frequently boiling
with a loud'and roaring noise, I still did not
perceive that it ever flowed over the margin
of the aperture. Its pipe or well does not
descend perpendicularly, but, after going
down some way in a sloping direction, seems
to continue in a nearly horizontal course.
Around its mouth lies a considerable quantity
of red earth, or bolus, and on one side of it I
Observed, what appeared to me, a curious
mineralogical production: it was imbedded
in a hard kind of rock, but was of itself exceedingly
brittle, and apparently'fibrous ;
looking much like asbestos, but materially
differing from that mineral in its extremely
fragile nature. On going to the foot of the
hill, near the spot where the waters of the
Geyser join a cold stream, among the numerous
rills which the heated water had
formed, I met with some uncommonly beautiful
specimens of incrustations. Every blade
of grass-, and every leaf or moss that was
washed by these waters, was clothed with a
thin covering of the same siliceous substance