4:1 li
Bn.
of turf had been completely shattered to atoms,
and dissolved as it were in the water, Avhich did
not recover the usual transparency of the geyser
waters when it ceased: the fragments of turf in
descending fell back into the shaft.
Black Eruption o f the Strockr.
The guides remarked that this was the first
appearance : the water, indeed, which at first formed a large part
o f the column, gradually lessened in quantity, and in a few minutes
almost wholly disappeared. But the impetuous rushing
forth o f the steam was increased by the removal o f the superincumbent
pressure, and it burst out with a violence which seemed
to tear up the very earth through which it passed.”— Dr. Holland's
M S . Journal.
time this geyser had played for upwards of a
month, the Prince of Denmark and his party
having choked it, by throwing in a quantity of
large stones. In a comparatively small aperture
like this, as in the Roaring Geyser, there is little
doubt that it may be choked up by heaping in
stones, and that steam only Avill force its way
through the water, though this would perhaps be
done at the risk of blowing out some fresh orifice.
The name given to this geyser by the Icelanders is
Strockr, the shaker, or agitator ; and from its
position I am inclined to think it must be that
which Sir John Stanley has called the New Geyser;
but the rim or Avail AA'hich he mentions as surrounding
it can hardly be said to exist. It is Avorthy of
remark, hoAvever, that there is close to this geyser an
empty shaft, Avhich emitted neither steam nor Avater,
round the marg;in of Avhich o there Avas a ridoo-e of
earth and deposit forming a kind of Avall; and I
can see no reason aaRa’, in such a situation, by some
convulsion or breaking down of the earth beloAV, in
the course of forty-five years, the old one may not
haA'e been closed up and the ncAV one opened out.
Sir John Stanley, indeed, observes that, before the
month of June, 1789, the year he visited Iceland,
his Ncav Geyser had not played Avith any great
degree of violence, at least for a considerable tim e ;
but that in the month of June this quarter of Iceland
had suffered some very severe shocks of an