Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/195

 cook them in a hot spring on that river's banks. There the Waikato, New Zealand's longest river, famed for its Huka Fall and Aratiatia Rapids, passes within a few yards of boiling pools, and almost within its reach are geysers that mingle their waters with its cold eddies. On its right bank are four geysers; splashers clear and cloudy; steaming earth terraces and mud flats; and the Paint-Pots. When Taupo's residents want paint, they need not go to a paint shop; they have one of their own. From the Paint-Pots, one of them told me, they can get a dozen colors and tints. "Mixed with oil," said he, "their ingredients have been used to paint fence palings."

Taupo's best known thermal possession is the Crow's Nest Geyser. It is only twenty feet from the Waikato, and it has built around itself a big lump of silica that looks like a cream puff. This singular object is seven or eight feet high and stands conspicuously isolated. In its base is an opening through which hot water constantly flows to the river. At intervals of from one hour and forty-five minutes to three hours, the geyser plays from ten to thirty-five minutes and at least once daily. Its average height is seventy-five or eighty feet, and its maximum one hundred and twenty feet.

A Taupo geyser that plays infrequently is Waitikirangi, usually to a height of one hundred feet. The Tamati Geyser throws from four to five feet high for one minute at five-minute intervals. The Ioline Geyser is like a spoiled child; before it will play it must be soaped