The most famous geyser described by VON TROIL (who acted usually as penman for the party) was situate near a farm called Harkaudal, about two days’ journey from Hecla. You see, he tells us, a large expanse of fields shut in, upon one side, by lofty snow-covered mountains, far away, with their heads commonly shrouded in clouds, that occasionally sink (under the force of a prevalent wind) so as to conceal the slopes, while displaying the peaks. The peaks, at such moments, seem to spring out of the clouds themselves. On another hand, Hecla is seen, with its three ice-capped summits, and its volcanic vapours; and then, again, a ridge of stupendous rocks, at the foot of which the boiling springs gush forth, with deafening roar, and are backed by a broad marsh containing forty or fifty other springs, or ‘geysers,’ from which arise immense columns of vapour, subject of course to all the influences and lightings-up of wind and sky. Our tourists carefully watched the ‘spoutings’ of the springs—which are always fitful—and, according to their joint observations, some of these rose to the height of sixty feet. [Sidenote: Von Troil to Bergmann; 7 Sept., 1773. (Abridged.)] Occasionally—it has since been observed by later explorers—they reach to an elevation of more than three times that number of feet. Nor did Mr. BANKS neglect the literature of Iceland, which abounds with interest. He bought the Library of Halfdan EINARSSON, the literary historian of Iceland, and made other large and choice collections. And he presented the whole to the British Museum—after bestowing, I believe, some personal study on their contents—upon his return to England at the close of the year. [Sidenote: SOCIAL POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS.] For many generations, it has been very conducive to the possession of social prestige in this country that a man should have acquired the reputation of an adventurous traveller. Even if the traveller shall have seen no anthropophagi, no men ‘whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,’ he is likely to attain to some degree of social eminence, merely as one who has explored those ‘Antres vast and desarts idle,’