44 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. i. 



these are all boiling briskly. This boiling is due, however, 

 chiefly to the escape of carbonic acid, and of vapor formed be- 

 low, for the temperature even of the hottest springs does not 

 seem to rise to above 90° C The largest of the springs is a 

 well about twelve feet in diameter, inclosed within a circular 

 wall. The w^ater hisses up in a wide column nearly at the boil- 

 ing-point, bubbling in the centre to a height of a couple of feet, 

 and sending up columns of steam with a slight sulphurous 

 smell. A little farther on there is a smaller spring in even 

 more violent ebullition, tossing up a column five or six feet 

 high ; and beyond this a vent opening into a kind of cavern, 

 not inaptly called " Bocco do Inferno," which sends out water, 

 loaded with gray mud, with a loud rumbling noise. The mud 

 comes splashing out for a time almost uniformly, and with lit- 

 tle commotion, and then, as if it had been gathering force, a jet 

 is driven out with a kind of explosion to a distance of sev- 

 eral yards. This spring, like all the others, is surrounded by 

 mounds of siliceous sinter, and of lime and alumina and sulphur 

 efflorescence. The mud is deposited from the water on the 

 surface of the rock around in a smooth paste, which has a high 

 character all round as a cure for all skin complaints. When I 

 looked at it first, I could not account for the grooves running 

 in stripes all over the face of the rocks ; but I afterward found 

 that they were the marks of fingers collecting the mud, and I 

 was told that such marks were more numerous on Sunday, 

 when the country people came into the village to mass, than on 

 any other day. 



At a short distance from the " Caldeiros " a spring gushes out 

 from a crack in the rock of a cool chalybeate water, charged 

 with carbonic acid and with a slight dash of sulphureted hydro- 

 gen. There is a hot spring close beside it, and on the bank of 

 the warm stream and in the steam of the Caldeira there is a 

 luxuriant patch of what the people there call "ignami," or yams 

 {Caladium esculentum), which seems to thrive specially well in 



