, as in a pipe,
to the surface. It is not necessary to suppose a siphon; a straight
pipe, communicating with the air, will account for all that is peculiar
to this hot spring.

Before attempting to describe the wonders of the 'Devil's Canon,' it may
be well to give some account of the Geysers of Iceland, to render this
essential difference in character the more striking, especially as
numerous theories, professing to account for the Californian phenomena,
have been propounded by the people of that State, none of which are
thoroughly satisfactory to any one who has examined them attentively.

The following is taken from 'Letters from High Latitudes,' which
appeared in 1861, and is only one of many accounts by Iceland
travellers. Those interested in these matters will derive much
information from the sketches of Mr. J. Ross Browne, which have had many
readers through _Harper's Magazine_. We quote:

'I do not know that I can give you a better notion of the
appearance of the place than by saying that it looked as if for
about a quarter of a mile the ground had been honey-combed by
disease into numerous sores and orifices; not a blade of grass grew
on its hot, inflamed surface, which consisted of
unwholesome-looking, red, livid clay, or crumbled shreds and shards
of slough-like incrustations. Naturally enough, our first impulse
on dismounting was to scamper off to the Great Geyser. As it lay at
the farthest 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, and consequently
arrived on the spot with our ankles nicely poulticed. But the
occasion justified our eagerness.

'A smooth, silicious basin, seventy-two feet in diameter and four
feet deep, wide at the bottom, as in washing basins 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 vapor,
looking as if it was going to turn into the Fisherman's Genie. The
ground above the brim was composed of layers of incrusted silica
like the outside of an oyster shell, sloping gently down on all
sides from the edge of the basin.

'As the baggage train with our tents and beds had not yet arrived,
we fully appreciated our luck in being treated to so dry a night;