At Last This Hillock Was Passed; And I Saw The Geyser With Its Surrounding Scenery, With Its Immense Steam Pillars, And The Clouds And Cloudlets Rising From It. The Hill Was About Two Miles Distant From The Geyser And The Other Hot Springs.

There they were, boiling and bubbling all around, and through the midst lay the road to the basin.

Eighty paces from it we halted.

And now I stood before the chief object of my journey; I saw it, it was so near me, and yet I did not venture to approach it. But a peasant who had followed us from one of the neighbouring cottages, and had probably guessed my anxiety and my fear, took me by the hand and constituted himself my cicerone. He had unfortunately, it being Sunday, paid too great a devotion to the brandy-bottle, so that he staggered rather than walked, and I hesitated to trust myself to the guidance of this man, not knowing whether he had reason enough left to distinguish how far we might with safety venture. My guide, who had accompanied me from Reikjavik, assured me indeed that I might trust him in spite of his intoxication, and that he would himself go with us to translate the peasant's Icelandic jargon into Danish; but nevertheless I followed with great trepidation.

He led me to the margin of the basin of the great Geyser, which lies on the top of a gentle elevation of about ten feet, and contains the outer and the inner basins. The diameter of the outer basin may be about thirty feet; that of the inner one six to seven feet. Both were filled to the brim, the water was pure as crystal, but boiled and bubbled only slightly. We soon left this spot; for when the basins are quite filled with water it is very dangerous to approach them, as they may empty themselves any moment by an eruption. We therefore went to inspect the other springs.

My unsteady guide pointed those out which we might unhesitatingly approach, and warned me from the others. Then we returned to the great Geyser, where he gave me some precautionary rules, in case of an intervening eruption, and then left me to prepare some accommodation for my stay. I will briefly enumerate the rules he gave me.

"The pillar of water always rises perpendicularly, and the overflowing water has its chief outlets on one and the same side. The water does indeed escape on the other side, but only in inconsiderable quantities, and in shapeless little ducts, which one may easily evade. On this side one may therefore approach within forty paces even during the most violent eruptions. The eruption announces itself by a dull roaring; and as soon as this is heard, the traveller must hastily retire to the above-named distance, as the eruption always follows very quickly after the noise. The water, however, does not rise high every time, often only very inconsiderably, so that, to see a very fine explosion, it is often necessary to stay some days here."

The French scholar, M. P. Geimard, has provided for the accommodation of travellers with a truly noble disinterestedness. He traversed the whole of Iceland some years ago and left two large tents behind him; one here, and the other in Thingvalla.

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