Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 72.djvu/90

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to one hundred and fifty feet, and below the trap of the Laugafjall are extinct geyser sites forming six to seven well-marked craters. The geyserite broken and disintegrated builds up these mounds, and they slope down to the upper active geyser tract by narrow fissures or defiles (water courses), between rounded low backs of red or white ochreous soil. The source of the heat apparently lies towards the north and probably below the trap-hills.

It seems also likely that a deposit has choked up the various channels of a few larger geysers, which have thus become dissected into a number of smaller ones which by tortuous passages now are probably connected with the original larger conduits.

Then on to Gullfoss, across a "bad" river, the Tungufljot, and ever a rolling country in which there are farmhouses, bogs and singular desert-like tracts of stony fragments and sand, which latter has been sculptured and heaped up by wind. On the way the glorious high back and silver surfaces of the Bläfellsjökull are seen shining against an icy blue sky, and behind an effective frame of serrated peaks—the Iarthettur—which blackly show up in minarets and saw-tooth outlines against its frigid sides. It made a supreme picture.