with clear water very near the boiling point, and emitting
clouds of steam with a strong sulphureous odour. It
overflows at one point and forms a little stream of hot
water, which at a hundred yards’ distance is still too
hot to hold the hand in. A little further on, in a piece
of rough wood, were two other springs not so regular
in outline, hut appearing to he much hotter, as they were
in a continual state of active ebullition. At intervals
of a few minutes a great escape of steam or gas took
place, throwing up a column of water three or four feet
high.
We then went to the mud-springs, which are about a
mile off, and are still more curious. On a sloping tract of
ground in a slight hollow is a small lake of liquid mud, in
patches of blue, red, or white, and in many places boiling
and bubbling most furiouslv. All o «/ around on the indurated
clay, are small wells and craters full of boiling mud.
These seem to he forming continually, a small hole appearing
first, which emits jets of steam and boiling mud, which
on hardening, forms a little cone with a crater in the
middle. The ground for some distance is very unsafe, as it
is evidently liquid at a small depth, and bends with pressure
like thin ice. At one of the smaller marginal jets
which I managed to approach, I held my hand to see if it
was really as hot as it looked, when a little drop of mud
that spurted on to my finger scalded like boiling water.
A short distance off there was a flat hare surface of rock,
as smooth and hot as an oven floor, which was evidently
an old mud-pool dried up and hardened. For hundreds of
yards round where there were hanks of reddish and white
clay used for whitewash, it was still so hot close to the
surface that the hand could hardly bear to he held in
cracks a few inches deep, and from which arose a strong
sulphureous vapour. I was informed that some years
back a French gentleman who visited these springs ventured
too near the liquid mud, when the crust gave way
and he was engulfed in the horrible caldron.
This evidence of intense heat so near the surface over f
a large tract of country, was very impressive, and I could
hardly divest myself of the notion that some terrible
catastrophe might at any moment devastate the country.
Yet it is probable that all these apertures are really
safety-valves, and that the inequalities of the resistance
of various parts of the earth’s crust, will always prevent
such an accumulation of force as would be required to
upheave and overwhelm any extensive area. About seven
miles west of this is a volcano which was in eruption
about thirty years before my visit, presenting a magnificent
appearance and covering the surrounding -country
with showers of ashes. The plains around the lake formed
by the intermingling and decomposition of volcanic products
are of amazing fertility, and with a little manage