AFTER fifteen hours of weary jogging, we found ourselves in the presence of the steaming geysers. Naturally enough, our first impulse on dismounting was to scamper off at once to the great geyser. As it lay at the furthest end of the congeries of hot-springs, in order to reach it we had to run the gauntlet of all the pools of boiling water and scalding quagmires of soft clay that intervened. A smooth, siliceous basin, A, seventy

two feet in diameter and four feet deep, with a hole at the bottom, B, as in a washing-basin on board a steamer, stood before us brimful of water just upon the simmer; while up into the air,

above our heads, rose a great column of vapour. The ground about the brim was composed of layers of incrusted silica, like the outside of an oyster, sloping gently down on all sides from the edge of the basin.

It was one o'clock in the morning when we suddenly heard a tremendous noise, and experienced a sensation as if beneath our very feet a quantity of subterranean cannon were going off. The whole earth shook, and the guide, starting to his feet, flung off full speed toward the great basin. By the time we reached its brim, however, the noise had ceased, and all we could see was a slight movement in the centre, as if an angel had passed by and troubled the water.

As our principal object in coming so far was to see an eruption of the great geyser, it was of course necessary we should wait his pleasure; in fact, our movements entirely depended upon his. For the next two or three days, therefore, like pilgrims round some ancient shrine, we patiently kept watch; but he scarcely deigned to vouchsafe us the slightest manifestation of his latent energies. Two or three times the cannonading we had heard immediately after our arrival recommenced; and once an eruption to the height of ten feet occurred; but so brief was its duration, that by the time we were on the spot, although the tent was not eighty yards distant, all was over. As, after every effort of the fountain, the water in the basin mysteriously

ebbs back into the funnel, this performance, though unsatisfactory in itself, gave us an opportunity of approaching the mouth of the pipe, and looking

down into its scalded gullet. In an hour afterwards, the basin was brimful as ever.

We had been keeping watch for three days over the geyser, in languid expectation of the eruption.

Suddenly a dome height of eight or

which was to set us free, when, on the morning of the fourth day, a cry from the guides made us start to our feet, and with one common impulse rush to the basin. The usual subterranean thunder had already commenced; a violent agitation was disturbing the centre of the pool. of water lifted itself up to the ten feet, then burst and fell; immediately after which, a shining liquid column, or rather a sheaf of columns, wreathed in robes of vapour, sprang into the air, and in a succession of jerking leaps, each higher than the last, flung their silver crests against the sky. For a few minutes the fountain held its own; then, all at once, appeared to lose its ascending energy. The unstable waters faltered, drooped, fell, "like a broken purpose," back upon themselves, and were immediately sucked down into the recesses of their pipe.

The spectacle was certainly magnificent; but no description can give any idea of its most striking features. The enormous wealth of water, its vitality, its hidden power; the illimitable breadth of sun-lit vapour, rolling out in exhaustless profusion,-all combined to make one feel the stupendous energy of nature's slightest movement.

And yet I do not believe the exhibition was so fine as some that have been seen: from the first burst upwards, to the moment the last jet retreated into the pipe, was no more than a space of seven or eight minutes, and at no moment did the crown

D

of the column reach higher than sixty or seventy feet above the surface of the basin. Now, early travellers talk of 300 feet, which must, of course, be fabulous; well-authenticated accounts, when the elevation of the jet has been actually measured, make it to have attained a height of upwards of 100 feet.

The most received explanation of the phenomenon is that which supposes the existence of a chamber in the heated earth, not quite filled with water, and communicating with the upper air by means of a pipe, whose lower orifice is at the side of the cavern, as shown in the drawing. The heated steam fills the open space above the water, and, pressing on the surface of the water, forces it through the pipe into the upper air.