aw 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