362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



white than the upper ones, had in places large black markings on them 

 that brought out to great advantage the contrast between their deli- 

 cate pale-blue water and that of the dark-colored lake that lay at 

 their feet. 



We camped for the night close by the terrace, cooking all our pro- 

 visions in one of the natural boiling springs. During the night an 

 ill-natured rat jumped into our spring, and compelled us to seek anoth- 

 er cooking-place for breakfast. While the Commodore and I were lying 



in a warm pool, smoking a last cigar before going to bed, Mr. F 



proposed to join us ; we warned him that the pool was very shallow, 

 but he was not to be dissuaded. When the moon shone out from behind 

 a cloud it revealed, as we expected, a round white island in the middle 

 of our bath. After trying in vain to make waves big enough to cover 



our newly-discovered island, we induced Mr. F to roll over ; the 



result was very comical, but it could hardly be said to be an improve- 

 ment. We found it no easy matter to get to sleep ; the ground was 

 very hot, and every now and then jets of hot steam would find their 

 way through the thin earth-crust and parboil us and soak our blankets. 

 All night there was the sound in our ears of boiling water, so that it 

 was difficult to get rid of a feeling of insecurity natural to so uncanny 

 a sleeping-place. 



We began the next day with an early bath in the basins on the 

 white terrace, beginning with the hottest we could bear, and working 

 our way down to the cold water : mortal man surely never had a more 

 magnificent bath-room. After breakfast we crossed the lake in canoes 

 to the pink terrace. It is not so large as the white, but of smoother 

 and more regular form ; none of the steps are more than six feet high, 

 so that the baths in them are all shallow, but the steps, covered with 

 a bright salmon-pink incrustation, run more evenly right across the 

 terrace. Some of our party, who had visited the terrace two days 

 before, had, I am sorry to say, written their names in pencil on the 

 smooth pink steps. The warm water, instead of washing them away, 

 had even in so short a time covered them with a transparent film of 

 silica, and there they will remain, along with the names of hundreds 

 of other cockney-souled tourists, enshrined for ever. The water here 

 is perfectly clear, and of a much deeper blue than at the other terrace ; 

 that at the top is of a splendid bright deep blue, but the steam is very 

 white. The setting of the two terraces is quite different; the white 

 one lies against a hill of moderate height and gentle slope, appearing 

 from its countless jets of steam to be a hill of fire. The pink one lies 

 against a fine bold hill some two thousand feet high, from which it runs 

 like a steep staircase directly into the lake. They are rival beauties, 

 both deserving many worshipers the white one, I believe, having the 

 most. 



Some of the small mud geysers behind the white terrace were curi- 

 ous ; they were growling, and throwing mud of every variety of color 



