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.Thurfday. i!
Captain-Cook fet out again with us the next morning, to
■ examine the hot fprings at low water, the experiments of
the preceding day being made during .flood-tide, about
half pad four o’clock. We immerfed the thermometer,
which in the open air had flood at 78°, and the quick-
filver rofe to 187°, after lying one minute and a half in
the hot water. This difference, from the former heat of
1 91 °, was rather furprifing, especially as the fprings ifiued
£0 near the level of the fea, that fome of them were covered
at high water, might therefore be expected to be cooled by
the mixture. We concluded that fome other caufe befides
the tides influenced the relative heat of thefe fprings, and
we were confirmed in this fuppofition by examining another
fpring which came out upon the great beach to the
Youth, at its weftermoft corner. Here, at the foot of a perpendicular
rock, forming part of the mountain to the weft,
on which the folfataras were fituated, the hot water bubbles
up out of the black fand, and runs into the fea, which
likewife covers it at the flood-tide. In the fpac.e of a
minute the .thermometer, after being placed in this new
fpring,rofe to 2o a f0, and remained at this degree feverai
minutes. It Should feem that thefe fprings are heated by
the volcano,, and run under ground till they find an iffue.
The fire of that mountain in all probability is not always
equally violent, and gradually cools in the intervals between
its eruptions. Different parts ctf it may likewife
have
have various degrees of heat, and the different fprings, by
palling over a longer or fhorter fpace, muft lofe more or
lefs of their original heat. The folfataras on the hill
direftly above thefe fprings, are in my opinion connected
with them; and the fleam which rifes from thence, through
Subterraneous crevices, may be part of the fame water,
afcending before it can be condenfed into a continued fluid,
by the coolnefs of the ground over which^it is carried. The
volcano had been quiet for two days paft, and offered no
new phenomena, from whence any of thefe circumftances
might have been better explained.
We paffed the day before and after noon, in the plain
behind the watering-place, and collected the flowers of an
unknown fort of tree, which we could obtain no other
way, than by Shooting at them. In the evening the feine
was hauled, and we caught about two hundred weight of
filh, which afforded another, though rather fcanty frefh
meal to the whole Ship’s company. Dr. Sparrman went
up the flat hill with me, where we paffed about half an
hour very agreeably with our friends the natives, who
made us a prefent of fruit at parting. We amufed them
as ufual by finging to them, and they became fo familiar
at laft as to point out fome girls to us, whom from an excefs
of hospitality not uncommon with uncivilized nations, they
offered to their friends with geftures not in the leaft equivocal.
The women, at the firft hirft of the civility which the
V ol. II. Y y
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