A Girl's Ride in Iceland

APPENDIX

Having been requested by my daughter to add to her little book a short explanatory chapter on the marvellous phenomenon of Nature she saw in Iceland, commonly called a Geyser, I herewith subjoin the results of a few of the observations and reflections I made while visiting the great geysers of the volcanic districts of Wyoming and Montana, in the autumn of 1884.

In order to make the matter perfectly clear, let me say at the very outset that a geyser is simply a volcano from which a quantity of superheated boiling water, saturated with mineral matter, is paroxysmally ejected high into the air. Instead of, as in the case of fire volcanoes, the ejected matters being smoke, flame, lava, scoria, pumice stone, and scalding mud. Moreover, while the eruptions from all volcanoes are intermittent – that is to say, every kind of volcano has alternating periods of activity and repose – the eruptions from geysers further differ from the fire and flame ejections of burning mountains, with their other attendant phenomena, in occurring at definite periods of time, and being of equally definite durations. It is this life-like periodicity in the geyser's mode of action which makes it as awe-inspiring to behold as it is puzzling to explain.

That hot water should issue in a continuous and but little varying sized stream from the bowels of the earth, with a force sufficient to carry it high into the air, has nothing whatever wonderful about it. Such a natural phenomenon may be witnessed at many places. For example, it may be seen doing so everyday at the white foaming, frothing, natural mineral water sprudel of Nauheim, or at any artificially bored artesian well, such as the celebrated one at Paris. Nor does the mere intermittence of water issuing from the bowels of the earth suffice to surprise one. For such natural phenomena are seen at Bolder-Born, in Westphalia; the Lay-Well, at Torbay; the Giggleswick Well, in Yorkshire; and even on a small scale at St Anthony's Well, Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh; all which occurrences are readily explicable on ordinary hydraulic principles, and quite different things from geyser action, which try to explain it as you will, always runs into a volcanic groove. Yet the periodicity of a geyser's action cannot be said to be entirely due to volcanic agency. For the mere action of heat on the solids of the earth's crust, or even of heat in simple conjunction with water, according to either Mackenzie or Tyndall's theories,2 even did they suffice to give a satisfactory explanation of the action of the geysers in Iceland, are assuredly totally inadequate to explain the action of all those of the Yellowstone Park. For the simple reason that the vapours escaping from some of them are so strongly impregnated with hydrochloric, sulphurous, and sulphuric acid gases, as well as with sulphuretted hydrogen, as to compel one to believe that chemical action plays a not unimportant part in the production of the phenomena there witnessed. Moreover, the solids brought up by the water closely resemble in chemical composition the lava ejected from burning mountains, inasmuch as, besides containing a large percentage of silica and alumina, they likewise consist of lime, potash, soda, magnesia, and iron, as well as of a small proportion of other metals, as was guessed at by the beautifully varied green, rose, yellow, and purple hues of the beds of the streamlets flowing from the craters of the geysers. The geysers of the Yellowstone, although situated at the height of 7765 feet above the level of the sea, nevertheless lie in valleys, for the mountains surrounding them are much higher still.

Some idea of the force with which the water issues from the earth, may be formed from the fact that it is in some cases sufficient to carry a column of over six feet in diameter 200 feet high, for the space of twenty minutes at a time. And all know that 200 feet is nearly double the height of any ordinary church steeple. Moreover, the amount of solids brought up with the water may be imagined when I say that, in one of the boiling springs, the mixture so closely resembles thick milk gruel as to have given to it the name of the 'paint-pot,' and so loaded is its water with mineral matters, that they consolidate almost immediately after escaping from the spring's outlet. So thick indeed is it, that I kneaded some into the shape of a brick, which I have still in my possession. All the geyser water in this district is so charged with silicious earths that it consolidates sufficiently rapidly to form an upright rim around each geyser's vent. Just as a fringe of scoria and lava encircles the mouth of a burning mountain.

The rapidity with which the deposits form and solidify may be conjectured when I say that I saw trees growing close to some of the geysers whose stems and lower branches were so encrusted with geyserite as to give the idea that they were actually petrified. While again I saw an old horse shoe, which had only been fourteen days in the water, so completely enveloped with it that it looked exactly as if it had been hewn out of solid marble.

The mere glancing around, and noticing how the geysers had evidently, like human beings, but a transient existence, produced a somewhat strange sensation. For it was perfectly evident that they are born but to die. All of them appearing to spout themselves permanently out. For while on one side some seemed just as if they were starting into existence, on another were those apparently in the very zenith of their strength, while others again looked as if they were making but their last feeble efforts at existence, though it was evident, from the heaps of consolidated geyserite surrounding them, that they had but recently passed through halcyon days of youthful energy and manhood power. Every here and there again we came upon others from whose wide open empty mouths came forth neither a puff of steam nor a drop of water. They were dead, and not a few of them were so completely eviscerated as to allow of the explorer to descend with perfect safety into the bowels of the earth through their vents. Geyser activity is in fact but the last act in the drama of volcanic life: all around proved this. Close at hand were stupendous cliffs of pure obsidian – the black bottle glass manufactured in Nature's furnaces. Even half a mile of our road was macadamised with it. And so similar not only in chemical composition but in optical properties is this obsidian to actual glass, that a flat piece I picked up on the road, just after it had been splintered off a block by one of the wheels of our carriage, is as transparent as any piece of black bottle glass of equal thickness. These mountains of obsidian plainly tell how awfully stupendous must have been the heating process which called them into existence, as well as how big must be the cavities left in the bowels of the earth from which the materials constituting them were obtained. No doubt water scoops out caverns in the softer strata composing the earth's crust, but these can scarcely be thought to equal in extent the cavities made by volcanoes. Think, for example, of what a hole in the earth must have been left by the 50 miles long and 5 miles broad lava stream which flowed from Mauna Loa in 1859, and fell as a fiery cascade over a cliff into the sea, in sufficient amount to fill up a large bay.

The geyser basin is in many places actually honeycombed with various sized caverns, either directly due to volcanic action, or to water, or to both combined, and these caverns, though widely apart, may yet freely communicate with each other by means of subterranean river courses. I have myself followed one river course into the bowels of the earth for three miles and more, in the great Adelsberg Grotto, in Styria. I have rowed across the lake in the dismally dark cavern at Han, in the Ardennes. And even in our own Derbyshire, I have seen, half-a-mile from the entrance of the Speedwell Mine, a river, a water-fall, and a lake, all of which tell that such natural phenomena exist within the bowels of the earth as well as upon its surface. Moreover, the resounding echoes from the clatter of our horses' feet as they briskly trotted over some of the geyserite, as well as the heat we experienced through the thick leather soles of our boots as we walked across it, was unmistakable proof that but a thin layer of crust separated the surface of the globe we were traversing in Wyoming and Montana not alone from vast caverns, but likewise from still active subterranean fires.

All the preceding facts I have narrated must be borne in mind, in order that the theory of geyser action I am now about to propound may be readily understood. For unless the reader believes: —

1st. That cavities of various shapes and sizes exist in the earth's crust;

2d. That the earth possesses internal lakes as well as rivers;

3d. That there are vast internal fires still actively at work in the neighbourhood of geysers; and,

4th. That the smell of the acid vapours and sulphuretted hydrogen, as well as the mineral matters dissolved and suspended in the ejected waters, are proof positive of chemical activity, he will entirely fail to perceive the value of my remarks regarding the cause of a geyser's action being not only spasmodic but periodic.

On the next page is an explanatory diagramatic sketch, in which no attempt has been made at the impossible, namely, to apportion the size, the shape, or the situation of the cavities to each other. As they may in reality be close together, or miles apart. They may all be on the same level, or more likely not. They may be of nearly equal dimensions, or of varying sizes. It matters not one whit, for the purposes of the demonstration of the theory of geyser action now being adduced.

a. A cavernous reservoir, receiving its water supply by streamlet feeders (b) from the hills (a). b. A natural, and, it may be, circuitous syphon conduit, by which the water can only reach chamber (c) after it has filled tube (b) to the level of the syphon's top, consequently the supply of water to chamber (c) is intermittent, and only lasts until the water in chamber (a) has sunk down to the orifice of its syphon connection. c. Is supposed to be the chemical laboratory in which the decomposable minerals are, and it is further supposed to be heated by subterranean fires. In case the reader knows but little of chemistry, I may remark that all chemical changes are greatly accelerated by heat, and that superheated steam is a most powerful agent in expediting the decomposition of earthy and alkaline compounds.

In the case of these subterranean laboratories, it is utterly impossible for even the scientifically trained mind to conceive what the extent of the heat may be. All he knows is that it is probably far greater than suffices to resolve water into its gaseous elements – oxygen and hydrogen – and that even before this point is reached, superheated steam becomes a terrifically formidable explosive agent. Look at what it did at Ban-dai-san in Japan last year. It actually split a mountain three miles in circumference in twain, and blew one half of it right away into a valley as if it had been the mere outside wall of a house. And such was the force of the wind-shock it occasioned that all the trees growing on the opposite mountain's side were knocked down by it as if they had been mere nine-pins. (In 'Nature,' of the 17th January 1889, at p. 279, will be found an account of the scene of devastation when it was visited (in the month of October 1888) by my son Vaughan; the same who visited the geysers of the Yellowstone with me in 1884, and those of Iceland with his sister in 1887.)

In the case of the geyser, superadded to the superheated steam's explosive power, there will be in addition that of the gases liberated by the decomposition of the carbonates, sulphates, and chlorides (under the combined influence of heat and water) in chamber (c), which I call for the nonce the chemical laboratory. Not alone will all earthy and alkaline, but even metallic compounds, like iron pyrites, therein contained, be rapidly decomposed on the advent of the superheated water. And from their gaseous elements being held in a confined space, they will acquire an enormous explosive power. Consequently, there is no difficulty in understanding how that on obtaining entrance into chamber (e) by means of conduit (d), they will instantly proceed to expel from it all its water. And from the water finding no other outlet except by vent (f), it will rush through it, and, by virtue of the propelling force of the gases, be thrown up into the air in the form of a geyser. Whose activity will only last so long as the supply of water in chamber (f) remains unexhausted.

The above being a rough outline of the salient points of what I consider to be a rational, though, it may be, incomplete, theory of the geyser action I saw in the Yellowstone Park, I shall now add a concluding word on the probable mode of action of the so-called 'earth-sod emetic' that my daughter describes as having been given to the 'Stroker' geyser in Iceland in order to make it eject its water.

The mode of action of the sods, I think, is easily enough explained on the supposition that the geyser has a constriction at some point or another in its vent, and that the sods plug it up sufficiently to hold back the steam and water until they have accumulated sufficient power to blow out the obstructing body, and escape after it with a rush into the air. Precisely in the same way as a fermenting barrel of beer blows out its bung, and its fluid contents gush out, when its vent-hole accidentally becomes plugged up.

1

Mrs Somerville's 'Physical Geography;' Chambers' 'Encyclopædia;' Ree's 'Cyclopædia;' Lyell's 'Geology;' Mr George Lock's 'Guide to Iceland.'

2

Sir G. S. Mackenzie's 'Travels in Iceland,' in 1810, p. 228. Prof. Tyndall 'On Heat,' p. 126.