orm some idea by the shattered rocks
around us. The echo is very remarkable, and gives back the faintest
whisper with perfect distinctness."

* * * * *

Every traveller to Iceland feels bound to visit its Geysirs, and Madame
Pfeiffer did as others did. From Thingvalla she rode for some distance
along the side of the lakes, and then struck through a rocky pass of a
very difficult character, into a series of valleys of widely different
aspect. At last she came to a stream which flowed over a bed of lava,
and between banks of lava, with great rapidity and a rushing, roaring
sound. At one point the river-bed was cleft through its centre, to the
depth of eighteen or twenty feet, by a chasm from fifteen to eighteen
feet wide, into which the waters pour with considerable violence. A
bridge in the middle of the river spans this rift, and the stranger who
reaches the banks feels unable to account for its appearance among the
cloud of spray which entirely conceals the chasm in the bed of the
stream.

Into her description of the passage of the river it is to be feared that
Madame Pfeiffer introduces a little exaggeration. The waters roar, she
says, with the utmost violence, and dashing wildly into the cavity, they
form falls on both sides of it, or shiver themselves to spray against the
projecting cliffs; at the extremity of the chasm, which is not far from
the bridge, the stream is precipitated in its whole breadth over rocks
from thirty to forty feet in height. "Our horses began to tremble, and
struggled to escape when we drew near the most furious part of the
torrent, where the noise was really deafening; and it was not without the
greatest difficulty we succeeded in making them obey the reins, and bear
us through the foaming waves by which the bridge was washed." Either the
scene has greatly altered since Madame Pfeiffer's visit, or her
imagination has considerably over-coloured its principal features. That
is, if we accept the accounts of recent travellers, and especially that
of Captain Burton, who has laboured so successfully to reduce the romance
of Icelandic travel to plain matter of fact.

[Great Geysir: page153.jpg]

The Geysirs lie within a comparatively limited area, and consist of
various specimens, differing considerably in magnitude. The basin of the
Great Geysir lies on a gentle elevation, about ten feet above the plain;
it measures about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, while that of
the se