“The icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind;
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smite and say,
This is no flattery.”
As breakfast would not be ready for a couple of hours, I took some brandy and hot water at the Geyser, literally to stop my teeth from chattering, and descended into the gully behind to examine the banks of coloured clay. These lie, just under the Geyser, on the north-west side. Steam may be observed escaping from many little clay holes, and the sound of boiling may be heard inside at places where there are no holes. This hot clay is deposited in horizontal layers, red, purple, violet, white, light blue, and pale green. These colours occur by themselves, and are also occasionally found mixed together, mottled and variegated like a cake of fancy soap or a sheet of marble paper. Judging by the taste, the clay seems impregnated with sulphuric acid; and, to the touch, it is of a very fine consistency, having no grit whatever. I secured specimens of the finest colours, cutting them like butter with a table knife, and filled several empty preserved-meat cans to take home for analysis. The colours are most beautiful, but, apparently caused by oxydized iron, would, I fear, be useless as pigments. If this fine clay could be put to any use in the potteries, thousands of tons might be obtained here and also at Krisuvik.
What leads me to suppose that the colouring matter of the alumina chiefly consists of iron, is the fact that, excepting where the layers were evidently freshly laid bare to view by water or by some other mechanical means, the banks, however beautifully variegated beneath, invariably exhibited no colour but red on the surface; or, in other words, the iron was uniformly oxydized by exposure to the air.[[11]]
Further down the gully, we came upon large rough slabs of whitish stone, beautifully variegated with tints of violet, red, and yellow, dashed with blue. These were in compact laminae, and each colour about the fourth of an inch in thickness. In several instances however the colours, as in the clays, were mixed. I broke up several masses, and secured a number of the most characteristic and beautiful specimens. We also obtained chalcedony and agate, at times approaching to opal; these and cornelian being only varieties of silex, colour making the chief difference.
Before filling some bottles with Geyser water, as the wind was fresh, I set one of them afloat to be carried across the basin before it. When the half of its venturous voyage was accomplished and it had reached the tube in the centre, a little eruption came on, by which the bottle was thrown up, and floated over the outer edge of the basin. I succeeded in getting hold of it uninjured, arrested in a little pool amid the boiling water which was flowing down the sides, and afterwards filled it, marking it specially for Dr. R. Angus Smith;—“one whose name,” in a different sense however from that in which Keats used the expression, “is writ in water,” and let me add, in air too; for, in connection with sanatory matters and the supply or purification of these two health-giving elements to towns, no man in Europe has analyzed more water; nor was there any known index of local atmospheric insalubrity but the mortality bills, till he made his great discovery—the Air-test. On all such subjects there is no higher scientific authority.
Wandering, once more to bid farewell to the other springs, we could not but remark that the whole slope is a thin crust, with innumerable caldrons below; these each preserve their individuality, although the central heat be common to all, for the various eruptions seem to be quite independent of each other. Blesi was quite tranquil during the eruption of its neighbour the great Geyser; and the other springs take as little notice of the Little Geyser’s activity as it does of Strokr. Wonder ever increases, although the ground has been gone over so often as to be already quite familiar to us.