“Per ignes,
Suppositos cineri doloso.”
There are at least fifty items in operation over this big lime-kiln; some without drains, others shedding either by sinter-crusted channels eastward or westward through turf and humus to the swampy stream. It shows an immense variety, from the infantine puff to the cold turf-puddle; from Jack-in-the-box to the cave of blue-green water, surrounded by ledges of silex and opalline sinter (hydrate of silica), more or less broad: the infernal concert of flip-flopping, spluttering, welling, fizzing, grunting, rumbling, and growling never ceases. The prevalent tints are green and white, but livelier hues are not wanting. One “gusherling” discharges red water; and there is a spring which spouts, like an escape pipe, brown, high and strong. The “Little Geysir,” which Mackenzie places 106 yards south of the Strokkr, and which has been very churlish of late years, was once seen to throw up 10 to 12 feet of clean water, like the jet of a fire-plug. The “Little Strokkr” of older travellers,[111] a “wonderfully amusing formation, which darts its waters in numerous diagonal columns every quarter of an hour,” is a stufa or steam-jet in the centre of the group, but it has long ceased its “funning.”
Here we tried our final experiment. The small spring farthest to the south-west, and about 310 feet from the Strokkr; raised upon a little platform of silicious laminæ, and draining southwards, has two distinct issues, one nearly circular (1 foot by 10 inches), and the other long-oval (1 foot by 6 inches), distant 2 feet 2 inches, but apparently communicating; the depth is 11 feet, after which soundings are prevented by irregularities. We blocked up both apertures with well-tamped turf. The northern remained closed. After forty minutes, the southern began to play; it threw up gerbes some 30 feet, which showed fragments of “Geysir rainbow,” and this lasted at least an hour and a half, after which it was completely exhausted; its earths were stopped next morning, but during six hours there were no results. Simultaneously with this eruption, and reminding us of Horrebow’s sympathetic water, the Red Mouth, a dwarf basin some 440 feet to the south-east, into which we had also thrown stones, began to play. This experiment suggested considerable doubts as to the general applicability of all existing theories. Another point which still remains for inquiry is that of the Salses or cones emitting slime and hydrogen. In the United States it is supposed that these “mud-puffs” begin as clear Geysirs, or as boiling springs, and that they become thicker and thicker till the heat dies out, when the fetid matter no longer appears. As far as I know, the theory has never been applied to Iceland.
I cannot but hold the Geysirs, in their present condition, to be like Hekla, gross humbugs; and if their decline continues so rapidly, in a few years there will be nothing save a vulgar solfatara, 440 by 150 yards in extent. But, luckily for the sight-seer, facilities of travel increase in still greater proportion. A few will visit the jetting boiling water near the beautiful Lake Roto-ma in New Zealand, made known to us by the Curse of Manaia. Many will picnic to the “Grand National Park” of the Yellowstone, where, as in the new hemisphere generally, every feature, lakes and cataracts, forest and cañon, is on a scale unknown to the old.[112] Here the Mud Geysir (Firehole Basin) is a greater Strokkr; the Mud Puffs are the Thikku-hverar en grand; and the silicious mound of the “Giant Geysir” is so broken that its sinuous orifices expose the boiling water forty feet below, and its paroxysms have lasted three hours.
After this depreciatory notice of another “Wonder of the World,” it is only fair to the reader that he should be supplied with a description of it by a more enthusiastic pen.
“I was particularly fortunate,” writes a friend from Edinburgh, “in witnessing two grand eruptions of this magnificent fountain: the first from its commencement till its close.
“By the favour of the Danish Government, the 18-gun ship ‘Thor’ received six travellers on board in Leith Roads on the 18th of June 1855. My friend the late Dr Robert Chambers, in his ‘Tracings of Iceland and the Faroe Islands,’ gives an interesting account of our voyage, of a boat trip with him and a friend through the Faroe group, and of our ride to the Geysers.
“We arrived at Reykjavik on the 27th, having difficulty in getting a pilot to come on board the monster that could sail against wind and tide, the ‘Thor’ being the first steamer that had appeared in Iceland waters.
“After a ball at the Governor’s on the evening of the 28th, we started in the morning for Thingvellir, accompanied by Captain Raffenberg, three officers of the ‘Thor,’ our kind host and entertainers, and by young Count Carl Trampe, son of the Governor, with forty-one horses, and arrived on the field of the Geysers in the evening of the 30th. Shortly before, as we were descending to the ford of the river, a column like smoke was observed in the distance before us; this, as we afterwards learnt, was from Geyser—one of his great displays.
“A little tent pitched near the great Geyser was not proof against the pelting rain, but I was glad to get a friend to share it, the rest of the party taking refuge at the neighbouring farm-house.