. Greatest wonders of the world . n springs, and other curativeproperties of an extraordinary character, which are not pos-sessed in the same degree by any other known waters. Be-fore Mr. Froudes Oceana^ and the subsequent destructionof the famous pink terraces, little attention had been calledto one of the most romantic and amazing spectacles in theworld. The old terraces are indeed gone. The idyllicvillages, the blossoming slopes are a waste of volcanic ashesand scoriae through which the dauntless vegetation is onlynow beginning to struggle. The blue waters are displacedand muddy, but the di
. Greatest wonders of the world . n springs, and other curativeproperties of an extraordinary character, which are not pos-sessed in the same degree by any other known waters. Be-fore Mr. Froudes Oceana^ and the subsequent destructionof the famous pink terraces, little attention had been calledto one of the most romantic and amazing spectacles in theworld. The old terraces are indeed gone. The idyllicvillages, the blossoming slopes are a waste of volcanic ashesand scoriae through which the dauntless vegetation is onlynow beginning to struggle. The blue waters are displacedand muddy, but the disaster of one shock could not rob theland of its extraordinary mystery and beauty. For a dis-tance of three hundred miles, south of Lake Taupo andrunning north, a volcanic crust, sometimes thin enough tobe trodden through, separates the foot from a seething massof sulphur, gas, and boiling water, which around Rotoruaand Waikari finds strange and ample vents, in hot streams,clouds of vapour, warm lakes, geysers, occasionally deveU. LAKE ROTORUA 233 oping into appalling volcanic outbursts, which certainly in-vest this region with a weird terror, but also with an incon-ceivable charm, as white vapour breaks amidst floweringbushes, in the midst of true valleys of paradise; the streamsripple hot and crystalline over parti-coloured rocks orthrough emerald-hued mossy dells; the warm lakes sleepembedded in soft, weedy banks, reflecting huge boulders,half clothed in tropical foliage; coral-like deposits here andthere of various tints reproduce the famous terraces inminiature ; and geysers, in odd moments, spout huge vol-umes of boiling water with an unearthly roar eighty feetinto the air. At Waikari, near Lake Taupo, specimens ofall these wonders are concentrated in a few square miles—the bubbling white mud pools, like foaming plaster ofParis, the petrifying springs, into which a boy fell sometime ago, and getting a good silicate coat over him wastaken out months afterwards as good as
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectcuriositiesandwonder
