hat the island is best known
to geologists. Their waters are at or near the boiling point and contain
silica in abundance.

At a place called Rotomahana, in the vicinity of Mount Tarawera, there
was formerly a lake of about one hundred and twenty acres in area,
which was in its way one of the most remarkable bodies of water upon the
earth. Formerly, we say, for this lake no longer exists, it having been
destroyed by the very forces to which it owed its fame. Its waters were
maintained nearly at the boiling point by the continual accession of
boiling water from numerous springs. The most abundant of those sources
was situated at the height of about 100 feet above the level of the
lake. It kept continually filled an oval basin about 250 feet in
circumference--the margins of which were fringed all round with
beautiful pure white stalactites, formed by deposits of silica, with
which the hot water was strongly impregnated. At various stages below
the principal spring were several others, that contributed to feed the
lake at the bottom, in the centre of which was a small island. Minute
bubbles continually escaped from the surface of the water with a hissing
sound, and the sand all round the lake was at a high temperature. If a
stick was thrust into it, very hot vapors would ascend from the hole.
Not far from this lake were several small basins filled with tepid
water, which was very clear, and of a blue color.

The conditions here were of a kind with those to which are due the great
geysers of Iceland and the Yellowstone Park, but different in the fact
that instead of being intermittent and throwing up jets at intervals,
the springs allowed the water to flow from them in a continuous stream.

THE PINK AND WHITE TERRACES

The silicious incrustations left by the overflow from the large pool had
made a series of terraces, two to six feet high, with the appearance of
being hewn from white or pink marble; each of the basins containing
a similar azure water. These terraces covered an area of about three
acres, and looked like a series of cataracts changed into stone, each
edge being fringed with a festoon of delicate stalactites. The water
contained about eighty-five per cent. of silica, with one or two per
cent of iron alumina, and a little alkali.

There were no more beautiful products of nature upon the earth than
those "pink and white terraces," as they were called. The hot springs of
the Yellowstone have produced form