Twentieth Annual meeting. 27 



a false stej? at the right moment would precipitate one into boiling depths that 

 would literally tear you to atoms. The fumes exhaled by the waters of the white 

 terraces are so powerful that birds in attempting to fly over the caldron drop dead 

 upon the terrace. The birds, like ferns and other objects thrown into the shallow, 

 warm water, are quickly incrusted in their natural shapes, and are preserved for 

 years. 



"Just in the rear of the White Terrace is what is known as the Burning Mount- 

 ain, which is honey-combed with small, hot apertures that puff forth a multitude of 

 steam jets to acquaint us with the heated tumult within. 



" From the terrace we made our way over a rough, narrow path to a batch of 

 boiling springs and geysers, where we found one of the latter spurting a wild fount- 

 ain of sparkling jets and spray through thick clouds of smoke up to thirty or forty 

 feet in height. On the opposite side of the path is a rocky-sided spring, that at 

 our arrival was quite calm and noiseless; but upon the subsidence of the big geyser, 

 which is intermittent, this apparently recluse vent burst into a boisterous eruption. 

 A continuance of our walk for a few yards brought us to the boiling hole, now filled 

 with rocks, where a little native boy whose funeral we had attended in Wairoa made 

 his fatal misstep. A little beyond, as we approached another spring available for 

 cooking purposes, the position of the sun, as well as the looseness of my waistcoat, 

 reminded us it was high time to interview the lunch basket. One of our Maoris had 

 anticipated our coming, and immediately produced two kits from the spring filled 

 with nicely-boiled crayfish and potatoes. Seating ourselves upon the heated stones 

 beside the spring, we began operations. Kate's adroit fingers shelled the crayfish 

 faster than we could comfortably dispose of them. In exchange for the potatoes, 

 with their decided flavor of minerals, we were glad to hand over to the natives the 

 greater share of our hotel lunch. A short shower obliged resort to the shelter of a 

 wharl standing close by, which we found almost uncomfortably warm, owing to the 

 heated exhalations through the ground. In this little hut the child who was scalded 

 had lived just before his accident, consequently the building was declared sacred, 

 and soon afterward purposely burned to the ground. 



'•After our lunch and the shower were over, we again set forth with Kate at our 

 head over the roughest kind of a path a few score rods to the mud flats. Here we 

 found a great number of holes and chaldric pits filled with seething, sputtering and 

 popping masses of clay-colored mud. Here, scattered over the flat, were numbers 

 of mud cones which the fires within had forced up into the shapes of overgrown ant- 

 hills. Puffs of steam were continually issuing from the summits of these cones, to 

 make them look like miniature volcanoes. 



"Threading our way past these huge pots of boiling mud, and by the numerous 

 hardened cones, we came to a large pool of water so very green in in color that we 

 at once thought it to be in the worst state of stagnation. But to our surprise when 

 we arrived at the brink, we found it as clear and crystalline as a mountain pond. 

 Its mineral impregnations gave to it the vivid cast of green; strange to say, the wa- 

 ter of the little pond is quite cold — although but a few yards distant from the mud 

 flat with its many evidences of intense subterranean heat. 



"The next in the order of sights, and the most diabolical of all the countless phe- 

 nomena of the region, is an infuriated pit of steam ten feet in diameter, called the 

 Devil's Hole. From this raging, roaring, bellowing vent, a deafening tempest of 

 steam is debouched high into the heavens, with the burst and noise of the explosion 

 of a thousand escape-valves. One could almost imagine all the malevolent spirits of 

 the infernal regions were belching forth their most furious tempest blasts. In ap- 

 proaching the hole, Kate cautioned us to keep within the path which led over a hol- 

 low flat peppered with a million minute and sizzling perforations. In places the 



