Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/69

 one wonders to see such delicate fronds growing with vivid greenness on the very edge of smouldering clay; and, to all seeming, thriving beside living steam from pent-up fires below. And yet we shortly cease to wonder at anything. Everything is wonderful; to such an extent, that the very capacity for wonder seems to become blunted and sated with repletion of wonders.

Right at the back of the geyser, having walked half round the circumference of the great open basin, we come up to a roaring blow-hole. There is a noise as if all the din of Pluto's multitudinous workshops were focussed into this outlet. A swift current of hot air and attenuated steam comes screeching forth; and so strong is the blast that handfuls of large pebbles, thrown in by Kate, are sent spinning back, aloft into the air. Spouts of steam and jets of boiling water flash and flicker, and spirt and sputter among the white rocks below. They trickle and trail in glistening splendor over the incrusted bosses, the tattooed fringes, and the marble lips of the steep crater, at the back of which, right under the burning rocks, we are now standing. We are enveloped in steam. "The fountains of the deep" are breaking up all around us. It looks like a grand cloud of perpetual incense rising up to the great source of all life and activity, and we feel as the Psalmist may have felt, and our heart whispers to us, "Shall not Thy works praise thee, O God?"

As the perpetual, ceaseless beat of the throbbing engines below shakes the earth, we think again of