stream, and began following its course upward toward
tbis basin. At a place wbere the temperature
was 48° Celsius, 118.4° Fahrenheit, the rocks and
sticks in the water were thickly covered with dark-
green algae. A little higher up the temperature was
51° Celsius, 123.8° Fahrenheit, and algae were still
present, though the fumes of sulphur that rose choked
me as I stooped to examine the temperature. We
had now come to a thick jungle where the ground
was so soft and miry it was both difficult and dangerous
to get nearer the boiling pool. At last one of
the natives was induced by the promise of a large
piece of silver to cut away the bamboos and small
shrubbery, if I would keep close behind him. Thus
we slowly worked our way several yards higher
up, when I ordered him to turn toward the stream.
This hot-bog was certainly the next place to Tartarus.
In several places between the clumps of small trees
and bamboos the water was boiling and bubbling
furiously, and pouring out great volumes of stifling
gases, but I followed my coolie so closely that he had
no time to regret his agreement, and at last we
reached the bank of the stream, a place was cleared,
and fastening my thermometer to the end of a long
bamboo, I placed it in the hot, opaque water. Three
times I repeated the observation, and each time the
mercury stood at 50° Celsius, 122° Fahrenheit, but I
judged from the rate it fell after the first reading
that it stood at 52°, certainly not higher, before it
was raised into the air. In this spot we had unfortunately
come among hundreds of ants, that came out
and bit me until my ankles seemed to be surrounded
with live coals, and at the end of the third reading
I dropped the bamboo and ran back with all my
micht, to escape these pests and end my misery.
While I held the thermometer in the bubbling (not
boiling) water, I ordered the coolie to raise the sticks
that were floating in it, but could not discern the
slightest appearance of any vegetable growth, though
it was very noticeable a little farther down the stream
where the temperature of the water was not more than
one degree lower, but where the quantity of sulphur
in the water must have been much less, judging by the
proportionate strength of the fumes that rise in the
two places. All the other readings given here were
made while the mercury remained in the water, and
as the thermometer had been carefully marked the
observations are liable to but little error. If some
other observer should go to the same places and find
a greater or less quantity of water, no doubt the temperature
also would be found to have slightly changed.
The missionary in our party, who had visited this
place several times, assured me that frequently, when
the cold stream that flows into this basin is much
swollen by heavy rains, the water is thrown up at
short intervals as high as a common palm-tree, about
fifty feet. The natives also told me they had all often
seen it in such violent action. The basin is therefore
nothing but the upper, expanding part of a deep
geyser-like tube. . . ,
We now returned toward Langowan, and visited.
a large basin of hot water to the left of the road, and
about a mile from that village. Its basin is bowlshaped,
nearly circular in form, forty-eight feet m