Lord Dufferin describes an eruption which he witnessed on the occasion of his visit to the Geysers, but for which he waited three days. Like pilgrims round some ancient shrine, he says, he and his friends kept patient watch; but the Great Geyser scarcely deigned to vouchsafe the slightest manifestation of its latent energies. Two or three times they heard a sound as of subterranean cannonading, and once an eruption to the height of about ten feet occurred. On the morning of the fourth day a cry from the guides made them start to their feet, and with one common impulse rush towards the basin. The usual underground thunder had already commenced. A violent agitation was disturbing the centre of the pool. Suddenly a dome of water lifted itself up to the height of eight or ten feet, then burst, and fell; immediately after which a shining liquid column, or rather a sheaf of columns, wreathed in robes of vapour, sprang into the air, and in a succession of jerking leaps, each higher than the last, flung their silver crests against the sky. For a few minutes the fountain held its own, then all at once appeared to lose its ascending power. The unstable waters faltered, drooped, fell, “like a broken purpose,” back upon themselves, and were immediately sucked down into the recesses of their pipe. The spectacle was one of great magnificence; but no description can give an accurate idea of its most striking features. The enormous wealth of water, its vitality, its hidden power, the illimitable breadth of sunlit vapour, rolling out in exhaustless profusion,--these combine to impress the spectator with an almost painful sense of the stupendous energy of nature’s slightest movements. The same traveller furnishes a very humorous account of the Strokr (or “churn”).