contrarieties, be prepared to find your home-notions contradicted, and your home-habits totally out of place.

Of natural Icelandic curiosities those most generally known are the Geysers, or boiling springs. Let us start at once upon a visit to them, and trust to our good fortune to find them in action. Away we journey over a hard, dry, barren waste, down a furious and steep chasm, descended by many a free-born peasant-legislator of the country on his way to the old parliament. Now we find ourselves in a broad alley of perfectly level sward, running right and left past

the bottom of a narrow natural staircase. It has been formed by the splitting of a vast field of lava, which covers the country, and which has been rent perpendicularly to the depth of about one hundred and eighty feet. The fissure thus created is perfectly straight for a length of about three miles. Keeping along the level sward, as if we trod the dry moat of some mighty fenced city, we are astonished to descry a river bursting with a lofty fall over what might represent the left-hand rampart. More strangely still, it seems to rush toward us, and to threaten to overwhelm us with a resistless flood. Yet, after bounding on for a few hundred yards between the rocky walls, it suddenly leads into a deep pool, and then, making a sharp turn to the left, dashes into a cataract, finally expanding into a broad river, and then sweeping on into a lake. Such is the famous and eccentric river Oxerá.

To secure immediate presence when the Geyser is in eruptive mood, tents must be pitched near to it; and our tent in particular shall be only about twenty yards away from it. True, so close an encampment to an unquiet neighbor brings it appropriate penalties. Night comes on, and men require repose, while the Geyser requires none. Evermore it boils and rumbles all the dark night long, over boils the water, and down it pours along the mound which in daylight appears to consist of stone cauliflowers, the petrified growth of ages of ebullition. At any time in the night this may take place, so that we must sleep with an eye as well as an ear open, and be ready to jump up at a moment's warning to see it exhibit its forces, as well as the gloom will perNot very refreshing this night's interrupted repose; and as soon as day

VOL. LVIII-NO. 1

dawns we may as well be up and look inquiringly at the great boiler. The subterranean thunderings wax loud; but there is no lofty outburst as yet. There are frequent threats, but no fulfillment. The sound is like that of a heavy cannonade heard at a distance. Such ebullitions generally last from five to ten minutes, and then subside, unless a great eruption take place. After waiting the whole day in often-defeated expectation, at last, at eight o'clock in the evening, as we stand upon the very edge of the basin, several reports louder than usual are heard. Now the water immediately over the long natural pipe in the center of the basin suddenly rises to a hight of three or four feet, and then at once sinks down again, but only to rise higher afterward than before. It continues alternately rising and sinking, as if thrown up by a succession of powerful jerks, until a thick column of water shoots up to a hight of about twenty feet, and then, rising higher and higher, separates into several distinct jets. These keep falling back into the basin, from which they are instantly thrown up again, thus producing a very pleasing ef fect. At length, having reached a hight of eighty or eighty-five feet, the water seems to remain stationary at that elevation for about one minute. Now it slowly subsides into its basin again, though not without several struggles. This eruption has lasted for five or six minutes, while we have been standing upon the very edge of the basin. We have done so with impunity, as the wind had sufficient force to carry the steam away from us while we stood upon the windward side.

This one is called, par excellence, the Great Geyser, and it has for many years attracted the chief attention of visitors. Geologists, chemists, and commen men have gathered round this boiling crater, and have experimented and speculated upon the real causes of its extraordinary action. In the opinion of some, a subterranean caldron acts as a steam-boiler, and generates the vapor which issues at the surface of the earth. But in opposition to this theory, it has been shown that the lower part of the pipe or tube is often undisturbed by the violent commotions of some eruption in its upper portion, so that stones suspended near the bottom have not been cast up, while others placed near the surface have been thrown out to

2

a great hight. The most approved theory is, that the mechanical force of the Geyser arises from the instantaneous generation of vapor, at an excessively high temperature, in the lower parts of the tube. The loud detonations preceding an eruption are probably caused by the sudden condensation of large vaporous bubbles, upon their meeting near the surface with a cooler stratum of water. These are abortive eruptions, unable to propagate themselves beyond the point of their origin, because of the low temperature of the column, and they are very frequent. The tube is the natural cylinder or steampipe in which the boiling process goes on. When the basin of the Geyser becomes dry, as it does immediately after an eruption, owing to the great heat evolved, the tube is almost entirely empty. Its side may be then seen to be very regularly formed, but contracted about a third of the way down, the whole depth being about sixty-three feet, and the diameter at the mouth a little more than eight feet. The heat stored up in this tube, which is the main source of the eruptive power, could, it is calculated, generate under ordinary atmospheric pressure a column of steam, of the hight of nearly one thou sand three hundred yards. The amount of heat in the tube regulates the eruption according to well-known laws. When the column rises, the top is no longer in equilibrium with the rapidly generating vapor below; and, in consequence of the large quantity of lateral heat evolved, the waters are forced upward, and overflow the basin. Then, in the proportion of the overflow, they diminish the pressure at the boiling-point below, when the excess of temperature above the boiling-point is

at

once applied to the generation of steam. This being generated, the column is forced higher, and, consequently, the pressure is lessened, thereby again developing more steam beneath, which, after a few convulsive efforts, overpowers the remaining body of water, and impels it upward with the well-known violence of steam. A succession of explosions is thus produced, while the state of the atmospheric pressure at the time will modify the ascents of the water. This latter is one cause of their irregular hights and duration, and generally limits them to five or six minutes. When in contact with the atmosphere, the water is cooler; and as a portion falls back into the

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basin, it sinks into the tube, which again gradually fills itself at the basin ; and thus the eruption may be indefinitely repeated. In this explanation we have endeavored to give a brief popular view of the theory of Professor Bunsen. tube will also enable us to conjecture the age of the Geyser. If we place a bunch of grass under a small fall, where the bulk of the ejected water drains away from the Geyser basin into the river, we shall find that in twenty-four hours it gathers a coating of silicia of about the substance of a thin sheet of paper. This is the unit for calculation. Assume three hundred such sheets to make an inch in thickness, and then, the hight of the tube being found to be seven hundred and sixty-two inches, we may infer its total age to be one thousand and twenty-six years. Such is the natural mode of numbering its years, and this may be negatively corroborated from history; for we find no notice of this striking natural phenomenon nine hundred and twenty-six years ago, that is, in the early days of Icelandic colonization, as we certainly should have done had it then existed. But the tube was then only three feet deep, while four hundred and twenty-six years afterward, when the tube must have become twenty-six feet deep, and its eruptions proportionably remarkable, mention is made of it; and from that time to the present it has gone on gathering flint and fame, ejecting water and attracting visitors.

Yet the hight of the ascending column appears to diminish in the course of time. We read that in Olafsen and Paulson's time the water was carried to the hight of nearly three hundred and sixty feet. When seen by Van Troil in 1772, it rose to ninety-two feet. In 1789, Sir John Stanley found the highest jet observed by his company to be ninety-six feet. In 1809, Hooker thought the jet rose to upwards of one hundred feet; and in 1810, Sir George Mackenzie stated ninety feet to have been about the extreme hight. We may assume one hundred feet to have been the extreme hight about this period, with an interval of thirty hours between the outbursts. In the year. 1815, the jets averaged eighty feet in hight, with intervals of six hours. Since that time violent eruptions have seldom occurred more frequently than once in thirty hours, and they seldom exceed seventy or eighty feet in hight. In the year 1818 Dr. Henderson

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published his Journal of a Residence in Iceland, and states that he ascertained (probably in the year 1814) the pipe of the Great Geyser to be twenty-eight feet in perpendicular depth, with a general diameter of from eight to ten feet. He witnessed an eruption, and describes the water as rushing out of the pipe with amazing velocity, and as projected by irregular jets into the atmosphere, and surrounded by immense volumes of steam. The first four or five jets were inconsiderable, and did not exceed fifteen or twenty feet in in hight. They were followed by one of about fifty feet, which was succeeded by two or three considerably lower ones. After these came the last, exceeding all the others in grandeur, and rising at least to the hight of seventy feet. The great body of the column, which was at least ten feet in diameter, rose perpendicularly, but was divided into a number of curved branches, while several smaller spoutings were severed from it and projected obliquely. On the cessation of the eruption the water sank back immediately into the pipe, but rose again in a moment to about half a foot above the orifice, where it remained stationary. The temperature was at the time 183° of Fahrenheit, about twenty degrees less than at any period while the basin was filling-an obvious result of the cooling of the water during projection into the atmosphere.

Amusement may mostly be calculated upon by cooking joints or boiling eggs in another hot spring called "Stroker," that is, the Churn, which will churn any thing offered it; but the muddy state of the water caused by the turf or sods thrown in spoils the effect of the continuous jets. A turbid column darts into the air, perhaps for sixty or seventy feet, bearing up with it all the unwholesome food with which the throat of Stroker has been crammed. The masses thus injected by visitors act like the shutting of the safetyvalve in a steam-engine, when the steam, not having a proper vent, collects rapidly, and suddenly drives out the encroaching waters, and shoots the obstructions into mid-air with the velocity of a missile from a gun. Often, indeed, the column is il luminated by a beautiful iris, which diminishes the ugliness of the muddy stream, and adds glory to the spectacle.

If it be asked, Whence comes all the water for these huge boiling fountains? we reply: From the drainage of the hills

The

around, which must occasion a considerable influx. The whole silicious deposit extends for nearly five miles in length, and three quarters of a mile in breadth, at an elevation of about three hundred and eighty feet above the coast-line. Geysers lie toward the northern extremity of this vast deposit, and perhaps others may be developed in the course of centuries. An old peasant informed Henderson, that at one time, in point of hight, the jet or spring called the Old Stroker rivalled the Geyser; but that, immediately after an earthquake in 1789, it greatly diminished, and became entirely tranquil in the course of a few years. The same year Stroker that now is, which had not before attracted any particular attention, began to erupt, and throw up water and steam to an amazing hight. perfectly coïncides with several observations made by Sir John Stanley, in his Account of the Hot Springs of Iceland, where he says: "One of the most remarkable of these springs threw out a great quantity of water, and from its continual noise we named it the Roaring Geyser. The eruptions of this fountain were incessant. The water darted out with fury every four or five minutes, and covered a great space of ground with the eruption it deposited. The jets were from thirty to forty feet in hight. They were shivered into the finest particles of spray, and surrounded by great clouds of steam."

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From boiling fountains we may appropriately turn to burning mountains. Of Icelandic volcanoes, perhaps the most widely known is Hekla, though by no means the most destructive. Let us, however, undertake its ascent with Mr. Holland, and describe its noteworthy features. Riding up the valley of a small clear stream from the nearest adjacent farmhouse, we soon arrive at the rising ground lying at the base of the mountain. Thence our way lies over hills of volcanic sand and scoriæ, up which our horses must toil with painful labor; but after a ride of two hours and a half we stop and dismount at the foot of a vast stream of rugged brown lava, which flowed from the crater of the volcano at its last eruption in 1845. Hence proceeding on foot, we climb the steep sides of the lava stream, now cooled down to the most fantastic shapes. Here a great crag has toppled over into some deep chasin, there a huge mass has been upheaved above that fiery stream which

has seethed and boiled around its base. Yonder lies every form and figure that a sculptor could design, or wild imagination conceive, all jumbled together in the most grotesque confusion, whilst every where myriads of forbidding spikes and shapeless irregularities bristle sharply and thickly. We must needs jump and scramble from fragment to fragment of this molten ruin, and our torn and battered boots show with what painful labor. Quitting these lava-spikes, we come to a tract covered with scorice and slag, and soon afterward toil up a slope of vocanic sand and cinders, the looseness of which makes the walking most fatiguing.

At length we reach the first of the three peaks which constitute the summit of Hekla. Thence we look down into the crater-a true Tophet, and one of the mouths of hell in the ancient creed of Iceland-and we discern in it quantities of snow, near which steam-jets are smoking, and indicating the presence of active subterraneous heat. We are now in full view of the cone, about which vapors are issuing at intervals from the black sand, whilst in the crater itself, some hundred fathoms below, are gaping ice-holes, and great masses of snow side by side with sulphureous steam-jets. The poet who used Hekla as an illustration of blowing hot and cold in one breath was true to nature; for, strangely enough, while one part of the cone is quite cold on the surface, steam is issuing from another part higher up, showing that the heat is local, and dependent upon the fiery character of the under-beds. This is proved by the experiment of an Icelander at another place, who discovered that the heat began at two feet below the surface. Beneath that depth, he came to a violet-colored layer of soil of sulphureous odor, where the heat was greatest. Lower still it was found to be less and less, until at the depth of nearly eleven feet there was no heat at all. The depth of greatest heat at Krisuvili was ascertained to be twelve feet beneath the surface, and below this the heat diminished. Very near the top of one of the peaks of Hekla, Mr. Metcalfe dug a hole one yard deep, and, upon inserting his thermometer, and covering the hole, the instrument showed a speedy rise from thirty degrees to eighty-nine and a half degrees Fahrenheit.

The last or easternmost peak is the highest, to reach which we must slide down

the snow which fills the intervening gorge. As we clamber up the opposite ridge, the precipitous edge of which is festooned with long icicles, and stands as a wall to a very deep iron-colored crater, steam is issuing in all directions. Soon we perceive on the very summit of this peak a massive mantle of smooth lava. In the adjacent crater, which is really a continuation of the other two, (Hekla being a linear volcano,) though appearing deeper, because the precipice is loftier, several very active steam columns are rising, and one is almost comparable to the stream of Stroker, at the Geysers. It is now seen how the mountain is cloven in twain, the rent being curvilinear. Out of this cleft, a volcanic stream has descended, and its forbidding brown color may be traced stretching downward into the fire-stricken desert below. The entire scenery around is almost unearthly. Cone upon cone, black and barren, succeed each other. Whether fire or frost has the better in the battle which the champion elements are fighting, is hard to say. Now, perhaps, one, and now the other. The thin streak of gray smoke curling upward in one direction may be regarded as the banner of fiery triumph planted there; for it marks the position of the volcano, Kötlugiá, whose roof of snow and ice has been either melted or hurled miles away by the recent eruption, until all the mountain is of a dreadful pitch color. To the south is a strip of water, which is one of Iceland's largest fiords. Now and then the eye may catch a glimmer of the cluster of towns, which lie on this side of the immense wilderness of ice and snow, called the Vatna Jökull, which is said to cover a space of three thousand square miles, that is, more than half of Yorkshire. Masses of mountains of every conceivable shape rise to the northward; while nearly south, and separated from the coast by an apparently narrow creek, lie the Westmann Islands, wonderfully sharp and distinct for the distance. But it is time to descend, and down we hasten over the snow-blocked ravine, and up the second peak, thus far retracing our latest steps. Soon we traverse deep sand-beds of great steepness, and then, recrossing the slag-stream, manage to regain our horses, which had been passed round nearly in a circle to meet us. Here the guide points out to the west a spot called Unburnt Island, which is an insulated grass-grown eleva

Kötlugiá, which occupies a prominent place amongst the islands volcanoes, is situated about twenty miles inland from the south coast. Toward the south, in which direction a number of glaciers descend from it, lies a tract of about twenty square miles in extent, consisting entirely of ashes and other volcanic substances, deposited there during the eruption of the volcano, and forming a rude and terrible testimony to its eruptive force. As the volcano itself is almost entirely covered with ice, in which are deep and wide fissures, it does not seem to have been fully explored by any one, although some few ascents have been attempted. The crater or fissure is visible from a distance, and consists of an immense gap, surrounded by black and rugged rocks, which are probably composed of lava cooled by the ice. Two travelers, Olafsen and Paulson, attained to within a short distance of the chasm in 1756, but, becoming enveloped in snow and mist, were compelled to relinquish further attempts. In 1823, an Icelandic clergyman, John Austenan, got nearer to the fissure, and described it as quite inaccessible, his further progress having been hindered by enormous walls of basalt and obsidian, whilst other profound fissures radiate from the grand primary chasm.

The history of its eruptions and devastations is terribly impressive. The first eruption occurred in 894, and since that early date it has broken out no less than fourteen times the intervals between each eruption having been very unequal, and varying from six to one hundred and sixty-four years, and even at one period, according to some accounts, three hundred and eleven years. Between the latest eruption of 1860, and the preceding one of 1823, occurred the last eruption of Hekla, namely, in 1845. Of the earlier eruptions of Kötlugiá, that of 1580 is remarkable as being the date of the formation of the hi

A fortnight before the great earthquake of Lisbon, on the seventeenth of October, 1755, broke forth that eruption which is the most fatally famous of all for its gloomy grandeur, its duration, and its disastrous effects. Masses of ice, resembling small mountains in size, pushed one another forward, and bore vast pieces of solid rock on their surfaces. Sometimes the flames from the volcano rose so high that they were seen at a distance of one hundred and eighty miles. At other times the air was so filled with smoke and ashes, that the adjacent parishes were enveloped in total darkness. While the eruption continued with more or less violence, namely, to the ninth of November, copious outflows of hot water were poured fourth over the low country; and the masses of clay, ice, and solid rock hurled into the sea were so huge and numerous, that it is said the waves were charged with them to a distance of more than fifteen miles. In places where the depth was previously forty fathoms, the tops of newly deposited rocks were now seen towering above the waves. No less than fifty farms were laid waste by this devastation; and an old verse is still repeated which commemorates its horrors.

The last eruption gave premonitory symptoms on the eighth of May, 1860. A neighboring priest fortunately kept an interesting dairy of its displays and effects; and from this we learn that it was commenced by earthquakes at an early hour in the morning, and that in the day a rush of water took place from the volcano. On the ninth there was a cloud of smoke upon the mountain, accompanied by a fall of ashes, the water-flood still continuing. Similar and still increasing phenomena were witnessed day after day until the fifteenth, when frightful thunderings began, and were heard for three days. On the morning of the sixteenth the Jökull