II A SULPHUROUS WORLD 185 
over the hot stones. Now beside us we saw a huge 
cauldron of the purest white bubbling mud, and the 
rocks all round were pale sulphur colour, and in places 
painted with all the prismatic colours of the rainbow. 
It was all most weird and uncanny. The whole 
surface here has steam issuing from every crack and 
cranny and th^ ground underneath seems to be carry- 
ing on a regular fight with the elements, from the 
muffled sounds of bubbling, blowing, hissing, and 
snorting ; and the surface looks as torn and fractured 
as if it soon must vanish altogether. The whole air 
reeks with the odour of molten and foul -smelling 
sulphur. Gertrude had led me on, and we had 
not known what risky ground we had been treading 
until we got back, when our danger was most prob- 
ably exaggerated. As we came back through the 
native village the women were cooking their potatoes 
in rush baskets in the boiling spring. All their food, 
even bread, is cooked by this and steam. In the cooler 
baths these brown Venuses presented themselves in a 
variety of attitudes ; it was a sort of bathing thorough- 
fare, and the little half-aquatic broods are never happy 
unless disporting themselves in the tepid water. 
Our next excursion was to Waiotapu Valley, a 
drive of forty-four miles there and back. On the road 
from Mt. Pareheru we had a splendid view of all the sur- 
rounding country under Mt Tarawera, and of the black 
yawning crater at its side. The whole country round it 
is covered with a thick deposit of gray-looking sand 
now crisp and hard, and desolation reigns everywhere. 
In several places on the road there were deep rents in 
the ground, and in one place (Earthquake Flat) the 
whole valley had sunk several feet The country is one 
range of fern-covered hills and mountains, desolate and 
dreary-looking in the extreme. Its only beauty rests 
Digitized by LnOOQ IC 
