hur spring there, which will cure all our sore throats."

"Captain!" cried Pencroft. "What a pity that I haven't got a cold!"

The settlers then directed their steps towards the place from which the
smoke escaped. They there saw a sulphur spring which flowed abundantly
between the rocks, and its waters discharged a strong sulphuric acid
odor, after having absorbed the oxygen of the air.

Cyrus Harding, dipping in his hand, felt the water oily to the touch.
He tasted it and found it rather sweet. As to its temperature, that he
estimated at ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Herbert having asked on
what he based this calculation,--

"Its quite simple, my boy," said he, "for, in plunging my hand into the
water, I felt no sensation either of heat or cold. Therefore it has the
same temperature as the human body, which is about ninety-five degrees."

The sulphur spring not being of any actual use to the settlers, they
proceeded towards the thick border of the forest, which began some
hundred paces off.

There, as they had conjectured, the waters of the stream flowed clear
and limpid between high banks of red earth, the color of which betrayed
the presence of oxide of iron. From this color, the name of Red Creek
was immediately given to the watercourse.

It was only a large stream, deep and clear, formed of the mountain
water, which, half river, half torrent, here rippling peacefully over
the sand, there falling against the rocks or dashing down in a cascade,
ran towards the lake, over a distance of a mile and a half, its breadth
varying from thirty to forty feet. Its waters were sweet, and it was
supposed that those of the lake were so also. A fortunate circumstance,
in the event of their finding on its borders a more suitable dwelling
than the Chimneys.

As to the trees, which some hundred feet downwards shaded the banks of
the creek, they belonged, for the most part, to the species which abound
in the temperate zone of America and Tasmania, and no longer to those
coniferae observed in that portion of the island already explored
to some miles from Prospect Heights. At this time of the year, the
commencement of the month of April, which represents the month of
October, in this hemisphere, that is, the beginning of autumn, they
were still in full leaf. They consisted principally of casuarinas and
eucalypti, some of which next year would yield a sweet manna, similar to
the manna of the East. Clumps of Australian cedars ros