364 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



diameteiv Tlie water does not boil up except in one 

 or two places, and almost tlie only gas that escapes is 

 steam. Its temperatui-e is 7S° Celsius, 172.4° Fakren- 

 heit. On one side is a small brook wiiick canies off 

 the suiplna water, for this is truly a spring, that in, 

 a place where water fiows up from the ground. A 

 short distance to the west and north are a number 

 of hills, from which this water no doubt comes. As 

 stifling gases were not pouring out, I had a better 

 opportunity for examining the banks of the brook, 

 which flowed off sixty feet, and was then conducted 

 across the road l>y a causeway. Tracing it mth the 

 current several times, I invariably came to the first 

 indication of vegetable life in the same place. It 

 was a small quantity of algae on the bottom of the 

 brookj each plant being about as large round as a 

 pin, and an eighth of an inch in lengthy and re- 

 sembling the Vmieheria, or brook silk, the green 

 threads of which are seen in the fresh-water ponds 

 by oui' roadsides in summer. Here the temperature 

 was 70f ^ Celsius, 170.15° Fahrenheit. As the water 

 flowed out through this shallow brook, a large part 

 of all the sulphurous gas it contained of course 

 passed off, and I believe the vegetation began at that 

 point, not so much because the water was 1 J° Celsius 

 cooler than in the basin, as because it was much 

 purer, for at a short distance nearer the basin, where 

 the temperature was 77 J** Celsius, 172.82° Fahren- 

 heit, no kind of vegetation could be detected, and 

 yet the difference in the temperature, of the water in 

 the two places was only three-eighths of a degree in 

 Celsius's scale. 



