Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/249

Rh pool. The temperature of the water is about ninety degrees, but it rises occasionally to a hundred and more. we found a secluded pool, and took a bath there; after the bath we greatly enjoyed a luscious melon which our host brought us.



"It is a curious sensation to stand on a hill and look over a considerable area of country which may easily be imagined to be undergoing a cooking process from one end to the other. Jets of steam rise from the ground in a great many places; some of them continuously, others in quick or slow jets, and with intervals of a second or so, or perhaps fractions of a second, and others with dignified intervals of several minutes. Some of the geysers threw up columns of water fifteen or twenty feet in height; but, on the whole, they were less interesting than the geysers of Yellowstone Park in America. At one place the sulphur fumes were so stifling that it was next to impossible to look into the holes in the ground, and only possible by holding the nose firmly and looking while the breath was retained.