The site has been compared with the Vale of Siddim (the gushers?), where a certain “sad catastrophe” took place, and where general volcanic action exists only in the brain of M. de Saulcy. Nothing can be more unlike. These pocket “Campi Phlegræi” cover a few square yards, a patch probably overlying pyrites, upon the left or western plain, which gently slopes towards the Túngufljót. The “Tongue”[105] or Mesopotamian “flood” winds snake-like through the moorland of dull-yellow clay, rhubarb-coloured humus, and bog, alternating with green vegetation: here it is hid by high banks; there it shows its vertebræ in streaks and dots of silvery stream, flashing in the sun. Houses and farms unknown to the map vary the surface. The readily-flooded river-valley, of old a sea-arm, trends with almost imperceptible fall from north-north-east to south-south-west; and at this point it may be nine miles wide: in the former direction it drains the Haukadalsheiði, and ultimately the Lángjökull. Up stream the eye ranges from the azure saddleback of Bláfell, an extinct volcano, they say, to the lumpy cones and denticulated crests, rocky and snowy, known as the Hrútafell, the Hrefnubúðir, the Brekkja, and the Hreppfjall. Down stream the glance rests upon a number of little mounds dotting the various alluvial Doabs of the ancient Fjörð, especially the Hestfjall, backed by the taller Örðufell, lying south-east of Skálholt. The eastern bank is a regular line of rolling hill, separating the main artery from the Hvítá, the snow-streaked peaks of Gelldingafell: the Berghyllsfjall, and the coffin-shaped Miðfell are the principal eminences. The western flank is formed by the major range of the Laugarfjall, which is not named in the map; this line is backed by the Bjarnarfell, the Sandfell, and the lava-stream known as Uthliðshraun.

But the intricacy of the site, a valley within a valley, is not yet ended. On the west of the Túngufljót there are still two influents, badly shown in the map, which form a watershed of their own, flowing down troughs which often obscure them from sight, parallel with and eventually feeding their main stream. This secondary feature is bounded eastward by a dwarf divide, a shallow arch of ground, and westward by the Laugarfjall, an insulated node of degraded phonolite and heat-altered trachyte, which has been driven through the Palagonite.[106] This rock islet, a few hundred feet high, with its two green knobs, is divided by a stony precipice, and by a low, marshy, stream-cut valley from the western range (Laugarfjall), of which it is an outlier; and it curves with its concavity open to the rising sun.

On the eastern slope of the trachytic pile and extending round the north of the rock-wall are the Hvers and Geysirs. Nothing can be meaner than their appearance, especially to the tourist who travels as usual from Reykjavik; nothing more ridiculous than the contrast of this pin’s point, this atom of pyritic formation, with the gigantic theory which it was held to prove, earth’s central fire, the now obsolete dream of classical philosophers and “celebrated academicians;”[107] nothing more curious than the contrast between Nature and Art, between what we see in life and what we find in travellers’ illustrations. Sir John Stanley, perpetuated by Henderson, first gave consistence to popular idea of “that most wonderful fountain the Great Geysir:” such is the character given to it by the late Sir Henry Holland, a traveller who belonged to the “wunderbar” epoch of English travel, still prevalent in Germany. From them we derive the vast background of black mountain, the single white shaft of fifty feet high, domed like the popular pine-tree of Vesuvian smoke, the bouquet of water, the Prince of Wales feathers, double-plumed and triple-plumed, charged with stones; and the minor jets and side squirts of the foregrounds, where pigmies stand and extend the arm of illustration, and the hand of marvel.

In this little patch, however, we may still study the seven forms of Geysir life. First, is the baby still sleeping in the bosom of Mother Earth, the airy wreath escaping from the hot clay ground; then comes the infant breathing strongly, and at times puking in the nurse’s lap; third, is the child simmering with impatience; and fourth, is the youth whose occupation is to boil over. The full-grown man is represented by the “Great Gusher” in the plenitude of its lusty power; old age, by the tranquil, sleepy “laug;” and second childhood and death, mostly from diphtheria or quincy, in the empty red pits strewed about the dwarf plain. “Patheticum est!” as the old scholiast exclaimed.

It is hardly fair to enter deeply in the history of the Great Geysir, but a few words may be found useful. The silence of Ari Fróði (A.D. 1075), and of the Landnámabók, so copious in its details, suggests that it did not exist in the eleventh century; and the notice of Saxo Grammaticus in the preface to his History of Denmark proves that it had become known before the end of the thirteenth. Hence it is generally assumed that the volcanic movements of A.D. 1294, which caused the disappearance of many hot springs, produced those now existing.[108] Forbes cleverly proved the growth of the tube by deposition of silex on the lips,[109] a process which will end by sealing the spring: he placed its birth about 1060 years ago, which seems to be thoroughly reasonable; and thus for its manhood we have a period of about six centuries.

In 1770 the Geysir spouted eleven times a day; in 1814 it erupted every six hours; and in 1872 once between two and a week. Shepherd vainly waited six days; a French party seven; and there are legends of a wasted fortnight. The heights are thus given by travellers:

Ólafsson and Pállsson (1770-72),360 feet.
Von Troil (1772),92”
Stanley (1789), measured with a quadrant,96”
Lieutenant Ohlsen (1804), mentioned by Henderson, also with a quadrant,212”
Hooker (1809), upwards of a100”
Mackenzie (1810),90”
Henderson (1815),60-80“Second visit, above 200 ft.
Barrow (1834),80”
Pliny Miles (1854),70-72”
Forbes (1860),60-100”
Symington (1862),200”
Baring-Gould (1863),90-100”
Bryson (1864),“as high as theScott Monument.”
Robert Mackay Smith (1864),100measured feet.

Thus the mean of the best authorities would be 80 feet, exactly equal to the Grandes Eaux of Versailles. The artificial maximum is popularly laid down at 90 feet. But torpedo experiments with 100 lbs. of picric powder have lifted a 2000-ton column 53 yards high; and we hear of pillars 50 feet thick reaching 123 yards. The Giant Geysir, a silicious spring near the head of the Firehole River, according to Dr F. V. Hayden, propels an 8-feet shaft by steady impulses from 150 to 200 feet from the orifice.

The shooting action of the Geysir, an affair of 700 horse-power, has been explained in four distinct and several ways: by a reservoir, by a straight tube, by a bent tube, and by no tube at all. Furthermore, one experimenter applies fire to the centre of the tube, another cold, whilst a third heats the angle. Mackenzie suggested the “hypothetical subterranean cave” which was adopted by all the writers of his day; by Scrope, Dufferin, the Napoleon Book, and many others. They all forget that the reservoir and the syphon would produce regular and not intermittent action.