Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/163

Rh thermal district. It is not nearly so conspicuous as some other calorific surfaces; it is like a big kitchen stove set in a hollow, a stove with many pots, and all those pots perpetually boiling. The first evidence of underground heat that I saw here was at a turn of the coach road. From a yellow bank on a hillside columns of steam floated lazily away. On the side of one of these hills was a big white patch of silicated rock heaped into a ghostly mound; in it was a large steaming cavity. Next clouds of vapor rose near the road; they came from the pulsing heart of Tikitere. Tikitere impressed me as the most dismal of all the thermal areas of the North Island; certainly I found none more nauseating. Its silica mounds and banks had a sepulchral appearance, and were thrown up like drifts of snow. In sunlight their whiteness was dazzling. Their surface was stained with sulphur, and from their mud-spattered basins poured suffocating masses of steam charged with sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphuric acid. These obnoxious, odorous blankets were worst at Hell's Gate, the real entrance to Tikitere. There they enveloped me so thickly that I had to gasp for breath as I halted for a view, and I was soon glad to escape to a clearer atmosphere. Hell's Gate was a thick ledge of silica, overlooking to right and left a large boiling muddy pool. These pools were almost as large as ponds, and over all their surface there was terrific activity. Both were covered with countless bubbles, and in one I heard