Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/80

 and Blue lakes on the way. One lake is really green and the other is really blue, and both may be seen at the same time from a high place on the stage road. At Green lake we encountered a photographer, who, after taking our picture, accompanied us down to a buried town. While we were looking at these ruins, which occupied us possibly half an hour, the photographer developed and printed the picture, and took orders from certainly ten of the fourteen passengers In 1886 this section was visited by an earthquake. A tract of country nineteen miles long was affected, and 135 people, mostly natives, were killed. After taking a look at the town buried in 1886, we drove a mile, and embarked on a launch for a ride of eight miles. Then we walked over a mountain, and embarked on another launch for a ride of six miles across White lake. This lake is really a crater, and in spots the water is boiling hot. For some reason, the water is nearly as white as milk, and in the crumbling walls surrounding the lake are hundreds of smoking geysers. The place looks like a lake in purgatory, and the country surrounding it is as desolate and barren as can be imagined. On this ride we passed the site of the terraces, or mammoth hot springs, which were destroyed by the eruption twenty-six years ago. When we landed, we met another party, going the route we had come, and, as soon as we disembarked, they went on board, and left us. We found an old guide waiting for us, and started on a walk of three miles through a lava-bed. We were always in sight of smoking springs and geysers. At one place we were compelled to ford a considerable stream, and the guide carried the women across The