708 ON THE VOLCANO OP TAAL, 



another. The margin of the lake, which is alternately washed and 

 left dry, was a soft and steaming miid full of little fumeroles of 

 vapor in places with the temperature of boiling water. In other 

 places the mud was white with a temperature of about 100 degrees. 

 Every now and then this lake came into a state of slight ebulli- 

 tion, during which time the surface bubbled, throwing up small 

 quantities of mud a short distance above the surface. Sehor 

 Centeno was unable to ascertain the depth as the margin cannot 

 be approached except on one side. It appears to be very deep, 

 with a temperature of about boiling water. The taste was acid 

 and astringent. 



This was much the state in which I saw the lake except that 

 the signs of ebullition were very faint, and the whole appeared 

 to have cooled down considerably since the visit of the Spanish 

 geologist. The accompanying map with a dotted line will show 

 the track of Seiior Centeno which I followed to some extent, 

 except that I did not go so far round the yellow lake. He sur- 

 rounded all the southern margin of this lake to the poiut N, on 

 an extremely rugged and narrow path between the walls of the 

 crater and the water. From this he returned to the poiut A, 

 following the interior walls of the second crater, reaching the 

 point B, which is a truncated cone with a base about 130 yards 

 wide and 25 yards deep, with almost vertical walls and exactly like 

 the small craters already described at Las Canas. From thence 

 he went to the edge of the blue-green lake marked C, and then 

 to the point D, from which the sulphurous fumes issued forth 

 from a small crater. Either the point G or H in his map, was 

 also contributing abundance of fumes at the time of my visit, so 

 there had been an alteration to that extent. He speaks of a 

 small cone with a circular crater surrounding this fumerole com- 

 posed of cinders, but there was nothing of the kind at the time of 

 my visit. There were six broken, half-formed craters like Las 

 Canas ; one great slope encircling half of them on the .south-side 

 composed of red ropy looking scorire. On the side of this was an 

 almost smooth, yellowish-white, muddy surface, in the midst of 

 which were two round pits out of both of which dense white 



