THERMAL WONDERS.

Evening Star, Issue 14631, 29 July 1911, Page 9

THERMAL WONDERS.

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SOME HOT SPRINGS PHENOMENA. [By B. E. BAUGHAX.] Tho volcanic ,fires have died down—tho strange volcanic liros that shot out once through half a dozen mountainheads in what wo call now the Thermal District of New Zealand. Yes, the fires have died down, but in their stead have sprung up tho waters—the hot and boiling waters that in their way are as wonderful as tho fires. What has caused them ? Surface water, answers Science, permeating through fissures to the layer of incandescence down below. The sacred fire of Hawaiki, says the Maori legend, spurting up through water holes in the earth’s surface, what time tho two taniwhas brought it underground from White Island to warm the freezing chief upon the thou cold summit of Nganrn-hoo. But if you ask the Maori legend how tho heavenly fire did it, and if you ask Science for what purpose the heat and the water are there at all, both are silent.

What do they look like, these mysterious fountains? They have various aspects. Sometimes they shoot great streams of boiling water straight up into tho air for a hundred feet and more; sometimes they lie at your feet like living jewels of aquamarine, opal, turquoise, or sapphire completely clear, yet steaming. Sometimes they axe as elusive and imponderable as breath—white volumes of steam merely issuing from vents here and there in the earth; sometimes they mix themselves thickly up with clay and mud, and can only wink_ and blink at you with blind eyes. They turn painter often, and streak tho face of earth at times with colors more gay than pretty; at times with a blondin- of soft hues delicate as any flower’s. Sometimes they turn doctor, and work unweariedly and with angelic mercy at tho task of renewing the disordered bodies of men. Shall we go and pay a few of them a brief visit ?

First, then, let us go to the geysers. There are geysers at each of the chief centres of the district—at Wairakoi, that is, and Waiotapu, at Taupo and Orakoi-Korako, at Rotorua, and, I was going to say, Rotumahana, but groat SVnimangu plays there now no more. Waimangu, that used to fling his column of inky water and mud and stones over a thousand feet up into the air, it is said, at times, lingo and hideous. Only his lesser brethren now are left; hut they are lovely. Imagine a tall, slender stream of water shooting, white against the blue sky, higher ami higher up towards it; every part of it seeming, as it were, incessantly to climb, yet as incessantly falling; showers of crystal sprays of diamonds scattering tho air around it, sparkling in the sun, yet veiled now and then by breaths of vapor, snow white here, there opal blue, or painted in places with a vanishing rainbow. . . . And now the column dwindles, the sparkling ceases, the power subsides, with a subterranean sob or two, tho geyser is gone, the air is empty—except, indeed, for additional volumes of white steam, thickening into a cloud, then, like a cloud, dissipating and iiassed. Between its ‘‘shots” you could in many cases never guess at tho existence of a geyser, unless, perhaps, from the wetness'of the colored incrustations it loves to pile about it. You might think it was an ordinary hot pool only that you were looking at. Of some there is no indication whatever, except a little faint breath of steam issuing from a small fissure in tho rock-like crust. Which are the finest geysers in the district!- 1 Pohutu and Wairoa, at Whakarewarewa, near Rotorua, if only you are so lucky as to catch them playing—they are regretahly capricious. And next to them, the Crow’s iSTcst, at Taupo, a beautiful object when at play, in its setting of feathery green manuka upon tho very bank and brink of tho Waikato River, sea blue, and crystal clear. But there are hosts of lessor geysers all through the district, some of them just babies, a few indies high —and every one of them with certain distinctive features of its own.

Next, tho pools, boiling or only hot. It is they who supply the plumes of steam that make so marked a feature in tho landscape, glittering in the distance amid tho grey-green leagues of manuka scrub, wool white, seen close to in tho daytime, golden pyres at sunset. It is tiiev who unstintedly supply the hot medicinal baths for the sick, tho luxurious baths for the sound ; who never think domestic toil beneath them, but without grumbling, wages, or any sign of overwork from year’s end to year’s end boil tho Maori housewife’s kettle for her, cook the potatoes, bath the children, and do nearly nil the washing. And in addition to being so “ useful,” how pretty they sometimes are! There is one at Whaka an absolute sapphire, some feet in diameter, fathomlessly deep, hut perfectly transparent as far as your eye can follow it. And this divine spcctaelo used also to bo tho community cook, until it cooked, with its unfailing industry ami thoroughness, an old employer, so now it is tapn. There is another, at Taupe —the Witch’s Cauldron —a lovely woodland pool, with a background of dark, gloaming rock, volvoted with mosses, hung with ferns, and with a queer sort of face, like a Maori carving, looking down from it over the steaming pool—tho witch, watching her brew. There is ono at Waiotapu that fizzles like champagne if you throw a handful of earth into it; and another at Wairakei —or perhaps that really should ho reckonded as a geyser—which needs no human intervention, but fizzles continually of itself, and in addition, by means of its overflow, highly charged with silica and other minerals, has spread below it the most wonderful slope, as of ivory, stained as it wore noth random washes of bright color, old rose, old gold, green, plum color, and with a little blue stream running clown it, and bright pools breaking in upon it. But wo must hurry on. To steam holes next. Thrust your walking stick anywhere into tho soil of a certain point near Rotorua Lake and you shall see and smell tho sulphur smoko rushing out when you withdraw it. Or go to Kerapiti, near Wairakei, and watch him—-ho is a steam hole—all alone among the bushes, puffiing out his great, incessant white blast. Throw a. stick at him, or an empty kerosene tin, and he will neatly return it to you without hesitation. The safety valvo of New' Zealand, Sir James Hector called him. Heaven forbid that anything should ever shut him down! Porridge pots next, and mud craters. The former are really exactly like the family breakfast pot, upon a generous scale, and sunk within tho ground. Those thick, creamy bubbles would bo appetising if they smelt a little less like ancient bacon. Or do you prefer to taste the result of this next ono, into which the anchovy sauco w’ould seem to have got upset? Mud craters are more serious things. They are dark to begin with; the mud within them, squirming and seetmng like boiling chocolate, or hopping actively out and back again like very dirty little frogs, has somehow a sinister aspect, and the taniwha’s breakfast bacon, somewhere undoubtedly in their vicinity, is “ reestior” still than that announced by the porridge pots. The classic spot of all mud pools is at Tikitere, near Rotorua, a place out of fashion nowadays, and one which tho tourist is hurried through, unfortunately, for few things in all the Thermal District can show in more impressive form what is, after all, its most impressive characteristic: rnysteriousness.