Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/159

Rh contrasts. There is beauty beside ugliness, purity close to contamination, heat and cold separated by narrow walls, and clear depths near opaque turbulent pits and shallows. Of these opposites none is more pronounced than the difference between Hamurana Spring and Tikitere. The first is a flood of cold, crystal water bursting forth in arborescent wilds several miles from Tikitere; the second, reached by coach through earthquake fissures, is an inferno of boiling black mud set in a sterile bed.

Hamurana is the most wonderful cold-water spring in New Zealand. It is, in fact, an underground stream, and its daily expulsion has been estimated to be from four to five million gallons of water, which it discharges into Lake Rotorua. Although Hamurana is not a tossing marvel, it seems strong enough to lift tons. Its strength other tourists and I illustrated in an amusing way. As we watched it from a rowboat we, following the example of thousands before us, threw pennies into it, to see them flung about and forced into the crevices of the wall. The coins were never able to sink more than a few feet. After we had gone Maoris went to the spring to collect the submerged coppers. As it was impossible for one man to get them unaided, the natives worked in pairs. One man remained above, holding a pole jammed into a crevice, while his comrade, keeping a firm grasp on the support to withstand the spring's buffetings, descended and gathered the coins. In crossing Lake Rotorua to Hamurana one passes