Page:Awful phenomena of nature (1).pdf/4

4 much less than the former, and scarcely at the interval of two minutes from the first, the water sunk rapidly in the basin, with a rushing noise, and nothing was to be seen but the column of steam, which had been continually increasing from the commencement of the eruption, and was now ascending perpendicularly to an amazing height, as there was scarcely any wind, expanding in bulk as it rose, but decreasing in density, till the upper part of the column gradually lost itself in the surrounding atmosphere. I could now walk in the basin to the margin of the pipe, which descends vertically to the depth, according to Povelsen and Olafsen, of between fifty and sixty feet. It was full twenty minutes after the sinking of the water, from the basin, before I was able to sit down in it, or to bear my hands upon it without burning myself.

My tent was next pitched at the distance of three or four hundred yards from the Geyser, near a pipe or crater of considerable dimensions, in which I had hitherto observed nothing extraordinary. At half-past nine, whilst I was employed in examining some plants gathered the day before, I was surprised by a tremendously loud and rushing noise, like that arising from the fall of a great cascade, immediately at my feet. On putting aside the canvass of my tent, to observe what could have occasioned it, I saw within a hundred yards of me, a column of water rising perpendicularly into the air, from the places just mentioned, to a vast height; but what this height might be, I was so