tors, and the boatmen all drunkards--two classes of men whom Mr. Barrow and his companions found, in their long experience, remarkably decent, well-behaved, aud sober. Now as the lieutenant went over the same ground, within a week or ten days of the same time, and probably with the same guide and boatmen who attended Mr. Barrow in his second visit to Norway, we can only account for this discrepancy on the general prin'ciple, that objects frequently take their colouring from the temper and disposition of the mind, as well as bodily constitution, of the person who views them. Mr. Barrow appears to be of a lively, cheerful disposition-and in this frame of mind may perhaps sometimes see objects couleur de rose; the Lieutenant, on the contrary, seems to view their dark sides only, and to shadow them out in a sombre and twilight sort of colouring, the reflection apparently of a less happily constituted mind-or perhaps of an older one that has encountered some disheartening experiences in life."

A six-days' passage, mostly of foul wind, brought the yacht within sight of the snow-capped mountains of Iceland; but foggy weather and contrary winds prevented her from reaching Reikiavik for three days more. Here Mr. Barrow had the unexpected good fortune of finding, in the person of the governor, an old acquaintance, a Danish gentleman with whom he had some years before wandered among the mountains of Switzerland.

The country around this capital of the island was dreary enough -not a tree nor a shrub of any kind to be seen. The following account of the gardens will point out the feeble and languid state of vegetation, though in a country which is many degrees of latitude to the southward of those parts in Norway, where whole forests of timber-trees, each worthy to be the mast of some great amiral,' are to be found.

To each of the merchant's houses, and to those of the governor, the bishop, and landfogued, is attached a small piece of ground laid out as a garden, mostly if not entirely for the purpose of raising a few culinary vegetables; and few indeed they were, as far as my observation went, and of a very sickly and languishing appearance. The produce consisted generally of cabbages, just forming into heads, turnips (I believe Swedish), parsley, and potatoes, about the size of crab-apples. The present was considered to be an unfavourable season, but still better than some others, when all attempts had failed to raise vegetables of any kind; but in the very best of seasons they never arrive at any degree of perfection. Radishes, and turnipradishes, mustard and cress, seemed to thrive the best, and were looking pretty well in the governor's garden; but he bestowed much care and labour on his little piece of ground, and often took great pleasure in pointing out to me the healthy state and vigour of three

ог

or four plants of the mountain ash, which (after I forget how many years' growth) had attained to the height of about four feet; and in the possession of which he prided himself not a little, assuring me that they were the largest, and in fact the only plants that deserved the name of trees, within the distance of many miles round Reikiavik.' -pp. 106, 107.

We must pass over the description of this smoky village,' the public functionaries, and the neighbouring salmon-fishery, and proceed with our author and his party on a journey to those extraordinary fountains or eruptions of boiling water called the Geysers-the result, no doubt, of internal fires, to which the island appears to be in all its parts subject, and may be said, indeed, wholly to owe its origin. The effects produced by them were visible everywhere on this excursion-in the numerous extinct volcanic craters-in the extensive plains covered with lava--and the immense rents or chasms at the feet and sides of the hills. Into one of these chasms, which bears the name of Almannagaiua, falls the river Oxer-aa, in a noble cataract or water-fall, the subject of a neat wood-cut. By this enormous chasm the side of a hill is rent asunder to the distance of three miles.

The party took up their lodgings for the night in the little humble church of Thingvalla; of which there is also a clever wood-cut. The whole surface of this part of the country bore many indications of having suffered a series of tremendous convulsions. Two other great chasms made their appearance not far from the church; and the sharp rocky sides and summits of the numerous conical mounds in the vicinity bore evident marks of having been vitrified by fire.

The unusual circumstance of a vast field of continuous lava (not merely a stream) that exists in this part of Iceland, without any volcanic mountain from whence it could have been thrown out, can admit of no other explanation than that which the succession of these small conical mounds appears to afford.'-p. 160.

The plain out of which the boiling fountains, some of water and others of mud, are thrown up, is stated to be about twelve acres in

extent.

The Great Geyser is situated on a mound which rises considerably above the general surface of the plain, and slopes on all sides to the distance of a hundred feet or thereabouts from the borders of the large basin on its summit; and in the centre of this basin, forming as it were a gigantic funnel, there is a pipe or tube up which the boiling water rises and the eruptions burst forth. The basin or bowl of this funnel is from four to five feet deep, sloping a little, like a saucer, towards the central tube. Into this basin the water had flowed to within a foot and a half of the brim when we visited it; and, as it was gradually rising, we remained on the spot

VOL. LIV. NO. CVIII.

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till

till it overflowed, which we were told was a certain sign of an eruption being about to take place; the more certain, as a bubbling or boiling up of the water was observed over the mouth of the tube at the same time. The temperature of the water in the basin at this period, as far as I could reach to plunge in the thermometer, was from 180° to 190° of Fahrenheit.

After anxiously waiting a considerable time, instead of that grand burst we had expected to take place, to our great mortification the water began gradually to subside, and did not cease to diminish till the basin was left quite dry. I had now, however, an opportunity of taking the dimensions of the basin and its pipe, the former of which was found from actual measurement to be fifty-six feet in the greatest diameter, and fifty-two feet in the narrowest, and the greatest depth about four feet. The shaft or tube in the middle, at the upper and shelving part, was found to be eighteen and a quarter feet one way, and sixteen feet the other; but it narrows considerably at a little distance from the mouth, and appears to be not more than ten or twelve feet in diameter.

I measured its depth on two sides: on one I found it to be sixtyseven feet, and on the other a little more than seventy. The sides of the tube are smoothly polished, probably by the constant friction of the water, which is also the case with the floor of the basin, whose surface is perfectly smooth and even, and has the appearance, in parts, of agate, and is so hard that I was unable to detach a single piece with a hammer. It is difficult to imagine in what manner this capacious tube, perfectly perpendicular, has first been shaped, and equally so how the smooth crust with which it is lined has been laid onwhether at once, or by successive depositions of the laminæ of siliceous matter. The lining of the basin or bowl would appear to be of more easy explanation: the water remaining therein quiescent may deposit its silica undisturbed, but in the pipe of the tunnel it is always bubbling or boiling, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, or exploding steam and water. But after all, that which is the most difficult to comprehend is this-that the water of the Geyser is perfectly clear, and gives no deposite without the application of chemical tests, and then only in the smallest possible quantity: it may be kept for years in bottles, without depositing the least sediment.

It becomes a question, then, how such a quantity of siliceous matter is deposited, not only in the tube and floor of the basin, but also on its rim or border, which forms the highest part of the mound. The matter here deposited is abundant, and appears to be constantly forming; and as this rim is out of the reach of the hot water, except in one spot, it would appear that this deposite is from the condensed steam or vapour, which is the more probable from the extreme delicacy of the efflorescence.

The stream of water that flows from the basin finds its way down the slope of the mound, and at the foot thereof divides itself into two branches which empty themselves into the Huit-aa, or White River.

On

On the margins of these little streams are found in abundance the most extraordinary and beautiful incrustations that can be conceived, which, like those on the margin of the basin, would appear to be owing to the steam and spray that accompany the water, rather than to the water itself. Along the banks of these occasional streamlets the grasses and the various aquatic plants are all covered with incrustations, some of which were exquisitely beautiful, but so delicate that, with every possible care, I found it was utterly impossible to bring any of them away in a perfect state to Reikiavik.

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Every sort of adventitious fragment, whether of pieces of wood, bones or horns of animals, were here found in a silicified state, and among other things, by the edge of the stream, I met with a piece of printed paper which, with the letters perfectly legible, exhibited a thin plate of transparent silex, giving it the appearance of a child's horn-book; but the moment it was removed it fell in pieces. Previous to our departure, the Governor had shown to me a worsted stocking which, by lying on the banks of this streamlet about six months, had been completely converted into stone, as had also a blue handkerchief, which exhibited all the cheques and colours of the original; these were solid enough to bear handling, and as hard as silex itself."— pp. 177-181.

In another part of this Phlegræan field is a smaller geyser, which the Icelanders call the Strokr, the shaker or agitator, and which Mr. Barrow thinks must be the New Geyser of Sir John Stanley. It had been perfectly quiescent since the time of the arrival of the party, but the guides, in order to bring on an eruption, dug up and threw into the orifice large masses of peat or turf.

6

And sure enough,' says Mr. Barrow, the boiling fluid, as if filled with rage and indignation at such treatment, burst forth almost instantaneously, and without giving the least notice, with a most violent eruption, heaving up a column of mud and water with fragments of peat, as black as ink, to the height of sixty or seventy feet, and continuing to do so for eight or ten minutes, when it subsided, and all the water sunk into the shaft, where it remained in a tranquil state at its former depth. The masses of turf had been completely shattered to atoms, and dissolved as it were in the water, which did not recover the usual transparency of the geyser waters when it ceased: the fragments of turf in descending fell back into the shaft.'—pp. 187, 188.

The party had waited three days in expectation of an eruption from the Great Geyser, when, after many tantalizing symptoms, they were roused from sleep early in the morning by a servant, who said that from the incessant noise, and the violent rushing of the steam, he had no doubt the desired outburst was at hand.

'We were of course instantly on our legs; and just as we arrived at the spot, a few jets were thrown up to no great height, and we were once more making up our minds to another disappointment, when suddenly, as if by a violent effort, the shaft discharged a full column

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column of water and steam, the former mounting in a grand mass to the height, as we estimated it, of between seventy and eighty feet. I must observe, however, that it is but an estimate, as the rolling volumes of steam generally enveloped the column of water, and accompanied it to the very highest point, so that it was not easy to get a fair view of it, much less to measure it with any degree of certainty; but I feel pretty confident that I have not overstated the height. I may here observe that these rolling clouds, which in common parlance I have called steam, are not that pure unmixed steam which is instantly converted into moisture, and vanishes when it escapes into the open air, like that which is let off from the boilers of steam-engines, but is here accompanied by a kind of smoke and spray from the boiling water that require some little time to melt away and leave the atmosphere clear.' p. 193.

It has been laid down by former visiters, especially Von Troil, that some of these spouting springs close up while others open out-and that all of them proceed from one great reservoir; but Mr. Barrow says, that as far as his observation went, he could not discover any correspondence in the eruptions of the several fountains; though he did notice that, when the ebullitions of one were feeble, the whole were so; and that, previous to the eruption of the Great Geyser, all the diminutive ones were in a state of increased activity, as if the fires had been stirred up for some grand

occasion.

If, however, we are to imagine that all these geysers and aper tures, that constantly throw out volumes of steam, communicate with one great reservoir of water from which the steam is produced, the escape of this steam through so many apertures must cause it to act with less pressure on any one of them, and probably less frequently in propelling the jets up the pipes or shafts; and we may, perhaps, consider these numerous safely-valves to be the means of preventing a catastrophe that the choking up of some of the larger ones might bring on at any time-namely, a general explosion of that perforated and tremulous crust of earth out of which they all rise, and convert the whole area into one great pool of boiling water.

up

with

The violence of the eruption of the Strokr, when choked peat and sods, might have been exerted on some other place, had not the force of the steam been sufficient to clear the passages.p. 203. He further observes

"

The projectile force given by the elasticity of steam is much increased by the direction, the smoothness, and the form of the cylinder. How these qualities were communicated, or what is going on below the surface, we may indulge in ingenious conjectures, but can know nothing certain. We may draw plans and diagrams on paper, placing pools of water here, and subterranean caverns there, for the reception of steam; we may imagine conduits to convey a supply of the former from above, and cracks and chasms in the rock for the passage.

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