only speculate as to whether it is capped with a vaulted coverlid or corked with a long core that penetrates to the internal fires. At the Great Geyser, on the contrary, you stand upon a regularly-formed mound some eighty feet across and of slight elevation. At your feet opens a circular basin of half that diameter and eight or ten feet deep, coated with silicious concretions like moss encrusted with silver. In the centre of this cavity you see, when the perfectlytransparent water is at rest, a cylin

drical canal, ten feet across at its mouth and gradually narrowing as its enameled tube sinks out of sight. The water, when in repose, fills the basin to the brim, and the fiercest and loftiest jets cause but little of it to flow down the sides of the mound. These explosions are preceded by sounds like distant cannon. Large bubbles rise to the surface, which grows convex, and the boiling column shoots to a height of from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet.

The Strockr (Churn) has formed no

mound, but rises

from a slight depression in the plain. Its water, of a yellowish tint though perfectly clear, sometimes sinks twenty or thirty feet below the orifice. This is five feet in diameter. The tube, perfectly round, dwindles as it descends. Its jets attain even a greater height than those of its neighbour, and are longer sustained. Henderson reports having seen one rise for three-quarters of an hour continuously to an elevation at some moments of two hundred feet. Ohlsen saw the column maintained at a fourth less than that height for a period more than twice as long.

The Strockr is modern, having been an inconsiderable hot spring eighty

years ago, when the third and oldest of the stormy trinity, the Old Geyser, was silenced. A convulsion of the soil swept off thirty or forty feet of the low hill on which it rose. The canals which fed the fountain were thus brought to light. The Geyser of history dwindled to a couple of basins, the larger perhaps fifteen feet across. The water stands at the same level in both. At the bottom two channels are seen to pass into a sort of cave, clouds of steam from which reveal the boiler that fed the ancient fountain.

An idea of the Geyser apparatus may be gathered from the accompanying cut. The jets are due to a reciprocation of pressure between water

THE STROCKR.

and steam in an underground reservoir. Heat is supplied by volcanic fires far above the boiling point. When the steam reaches a sufficient pressure, its expansion drives out the water; the weight of which, in returning at a reduced temperature, combines with the lowered heat to compress the steam until it can muster strength for a new effort. Water in the liquid and water in the vaporized state have by turns the mastery. The vertical pipes are never empty, so that the pressure of the water is constant, and the steam can gain only temporary and partial relief.

The solfataras, illustrated by that of Pozzuoli near Naples, have a closer

IT

T would be uncourteous in me, not to notice the 'Remarks' of Mr. Goldwin Smith on the criticisms which I ventured to submit in the columns of the 'CANADIAN MONTHLY,' on the article from his pen which appeared in the April number of the London Fortnightly Review, entitled 'The Political Destiny of Canada.' I regret very much that Mr. Goldwin Smith should be of opinion that in that, or in any other article that I have written, I have applauded abuse that 'a lover of honourable controversy would disdain,' or that I have appealed to prejudice, or made use of taunts. Though I cannot admit that I am liable to such imputations, I am quite ready to withdraw, and apologize for every expression that I have used, to which exception may be taken. I own that I hardly see how the charge of disloyalty, applied to those who advocate the disruption of the subsisting connection with the mother country, can be refuted. Mr. Goldwin Smith has explained his views on this subject with sufficient precision. He is of opinion that the only possible basis of government here is the national will; the only security for social order is the recognized justice and expediency of institutions.'

'Here, apart

from any republican cant, we must be loyal to the people to whom by right of labour this Continent belongs.' Might not the very same remarks be made with equal correctness regarding Her Majesty's subjects in the United Kingdom, and in other dependencies of the Empire? I believe that the national will is the basis of our monarchy, and that the British people de

sire to preserve a Constitution, which secures all the liberty that a free people can desire, without impairing the stable authority of an hereditary monarchy. Mr. Goldwin Smith complains of the imputation of disloyalty, and declares that he is not so irrational as to be an enemy to monarchy in the abstract,' but that hereditary government belongs to the old world,' and that if we rely on the hereditary principle as our safeguard against the dangers of democracy here, we shall be leaning on a bruised reed, and building on a frail foundation.' The learned Essayist, who is fond of making forecasts,' informs us that 'even in the old world, at least in the more civilized part of it, the hereditary principle appears to have arrived at its last stage of existence,' and yet I am charged with 'invidious exaggeration," because I have imputed to him that he incessantly sneered at monarchical institutions.' In deprecating such speculations as to the future, as those in which Mr. Goldwin Smith has indulged, I stated that I was not presumptuous enough to declare that the subsisting connection 'must be perpetual,' in noticing which statement Mr. Smith adds that I was not presumptuous enough to declare that I thought it 'likely to be perpetual,' or that it is not sure to come to an end.' I thought that I had sufficiently indicated my own conviction in the concluding sentence of my remarks: 'I do not believe in the probability of a complete change of allegiance being brought about in any other way than as the result of a civil war, a calamity so fearful that it will not be hazarded,

unless some serious misunderstanding should arise between the two Governments, and I cannot conceive that any such contingency is at all probable. All that I meant to convey by the remark, which has been criticized, is that I am not so presumptuous as to make 'forecasts' regarding the permanency of the political institutions of any empire, monarchy, or republic, and I am the less inclined to do so, when I find it admitted that revolutions often come at last like a thief in the night.' If Mr. Goldwin Smith be convinced that the hereditary principle appears to have arrived at its last stage of existence in the old world,' and that 'the elective presidency of the United States is a questionable reproduction of the monarchy of the old world,'and that 'an Executive Council elected with a proper system of rotation by the legislature would probably be the better plan,' I confess that it strikes me that he can have very little confidence in the stability of political institutions of any description. I had been under the erroneous impression that Mr. Goldwin Smith was an admirer of the institutions of the Republic, in which, in his opinion, it is our manifest destiny to be absorbed. I find that I was altogether mistaken, and that he has actually devised an improved system of government for the United States as well as for Canada. The elective presidency' should be abolished, and an Executive Council elected with a proper system of rotation.' The idea of an Executive Council elected by rotation has, at least, the merit of novelty, but as I own that I fail to comprehend the precise meaning of the Essayist, I shall not venture to discuss the proposition, but shall confine myself to the remark that before making further efforts to persuade the Canadian people to exchange their institutions for those which are confessedly defective, it might be desirable that Mr. Goldwin Smith should devote his energies to procuring that reform in the Consti

tution of the United States which he has recommended, but which I apprehend is not likely to be adopted.

After a careful perusal of Mr. Goldwin Smith's remarks on my former article, I find myself unable to withdraw, or even to modify my charge, that in his original essay in the Fortnightly Review there were 'grave errors of fact.' I can draw no other conclusion than what I have already stated, that the direct aim of the author was to create dissatisfaction in the minds of the Canadian people with the Imperial Government, and to convince them that the subsisting connection was prejudicial to Canada. The errors which I pointed out were grave errors, and cannot be treated as 'relating to secondary points, and to matters less of positive fact than of impression.' Mr. Goldwin Smith

charges me with having misconstrued him, as he did not cite the Intercolonial and Pacific Railways as instances. of the interference of the Colonial Office with our public works, but as 'instances of the influence of the Imperial connection in prompting us to undertakings from which, if we were guided only by our own interests and our own councils, wisdom might teach us to abstain.' The precise words in the original article on the subject of the Intercolonial Railway were 'into which Canada has been led by Imperial influence, and which, after costing more than four millions sterling, will,

as

some leading Canadian men of business think, hardly pay for the grease upon the wheels.' My reply to the allegation that Canada was induced to construct the Intercolonial Railway by Imperial influence shall be brief, but, I trust, conclusive. The following is the text of the preamble to the clause in the British North America Act' relating to that work:'Inasmuch as the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have joined in a declaration that the construction of the Intercolonial Railway is essential to the consolidation of