26 KANSAS Academy of Science. 



THE PINK AND ^YHITE TERRACES OF NEW ZEALAND. 



BY JOSEPH SAVAGE, LAWRENCE, KAS. 



It was during a recent conversation with Prof. F. H. Snow that I first learned 

 that his brother William had spent some 2^ years in New Zealand, in the immediate 

 Ticinity of the Pink and White Terraces. The journal which this brother kept while 

 there has been- kindly placed in my hands, and from which I will make some extracts 

 which I am sure will interest every member of the Academy. Before reading these 

 extracts I would say by way of preface to them, that the Pink and White Terraces of 

 New Zealand resemble very nearly in form and kind, the terraces found in the Yel- 

 lowstone National Park, at the White Mountain hot springs on Gardner's river — 

 with this exception: the deposits of the former are silicious, while those of the lat- 

 ter are calcareous. Having seen the Gardner's river terraces myself, and bathed in 

 their tepid waters — and also having seen Mr. Snow and party as they passed through 

 our city on their way to New Zealand, the extracts become doubly interesting to me. 



Passing through a 13-mile forest they landed at a native village, from which they 

 started before light in the morning for a nine-mile row in a boat over an inland lake, 

 when, he says: "We were first landed from our canoes at the foot of a white incrusta- 

 tion called the white terrace. About 300 or 400 feet inland, and at a gentle incline 

 from the lake, a huge roaring caldron day by day has overflown its sides with a sheet 

 of water, that in trending its way to the lake has denuded itself of its mineral parti- 

 cles and gradually amassed this immense berg of white incrustation. 



"Escaping from the caldron, the boiling water, becoming gradually cool, has fol- 

 lowed the erratic depressions of the slope to the lakelet, and in imbedding earth, 

 rocks, and fallen trees with its crystalline mites, has formed a succession of broad, 

 irregular terraces. 



"These steps and platforms are again fretted and engraved, and in places so im- 

 maculately white, they resemble broad tables of the loveliest coral. One could im- 

 agine the fingers of Jack Frost had been at work perfecting his most delicate mystic 

 devices. The projecting ends of the terraces are fringed with multitudes of taper- 

 ing pendants, resembling long rows of icicles, from which trickle continuous ril- 

 lets of steaming water. At intervals upon the surface of the terraces, Nature has 

 with that delicate art which transcends all human skill, chiseled deep basins that are 

 filled with transparent water, as blue as the heavens above. As you stand on the 

 white-chased edge of one of these blue spotless pools, veiled in the haze of steam 

 which rises from its surface, within view of the placid waters, the steaming islet, and 

 the flocks of native birds of the lake below, and within hearing of the roar and burst 

 of the spouting geyser in the caldron above, your position is truly one that beggars 

 the cunning of human lips. 



"Higher and higher we climbed up the intricate ways and irregular steps of ap- 

 parent coral and glass, till at the summit we reached the brink of the caldron. Here 

 we found a huge bowl of blue water that spurts in the center up into a crashing, 

 deafening fountain, that is hot to an infinite degree beyond the boiling point, and 

 emits a blinding cloud of steam that obscures the heavens. Strange to say, during 

 the prevalence of south winds this great volume of reeking water recedes through a 

 deep, gaping aperture into the bowels of the earth, leaving the bottom of the in- 

 crusted crater dry and safe to walk upon. The safety in intrusting oneself within 

 these walls of silica lies in the fact that the return of the mad fountain is preceded 

 by a terrible roar and rumble that no sane person will listen to without being stricken 

 with an immediate desire to change his quarters. In fact, most of the prevailing 

 sounds and symptoms of this region have a decided tendency to render one wary, as 



