HOT SPRINGS. 
249 
bathing a few yards from the point of communication, we experi- 
enced a singular but pleasant sensation produced by an alternate 
flow of hot and cold water. 
By far the most interesting and singular hot stream, in the hidden 
recesses of a wood, was discovered by the steam ascending above 
the trees in several directions, marking its devious course. It had 
worn a deep and unequal bed in a rock of compact lava, the sur- 
face of which it had rendered soft, and was overhung with trees 
of luxuriant foliage, and fringed with flowers of delicate hues. I did 
not meet with this rivulet, the temperature of which was 160°, till 
within an hour of leaving Los Bagnos, and could not therefore 
follow its windings and trace its source. It was with the greatest 
reluctance that I was compelled to quit a scene replete with more 
novelty than any that I had ever before witnessed. Let my reader 
picture to himself a smoking stream running with much force over a 
rocky bed, through a wood of umbrageous trees whose branches met 
above it, and he may form some slight notion of its very peculiar 
characters. 
Sonnerat has stated, and his statement has been copied by other 
authors, that a species of fish lives in these springs. It is scarcely 
necessary to observe, that I was unable to verify this observation. 
All the animals which I saw in them, and I saw two, a small snake 
and a frog, were not only dead, but boiled. The same author 
states that a plant vegetates in them, and in this respect my expe- 
rience partially accords with his. I found a small plant, apparently 
a species of Arenario , vegetating in a soil that raised the ther- 
mometer plunged amongst its roots to 110°, on the side of a spring, 
the temperature of which was 120°. 
The hot springs were so mingled with others of the tempera- 
ture of the surrounding atmosphere, that it was easy to put one 
hand into hot and the other into cold water. St. Croix states that 
some of the springs, near their source in the mountains, have a 
very strong taste of copper. I could discover no metallic . flavour, 
K K 
