Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/81

 guide was much the smartest man of his profession we have seen. Just how accurate his information is, I do not know. He says that most of the great processes in geology are carried on by internal fires in the earth, and that what we see on the surface here is constantly going on, on a very much larger scale, deeper down. The water from every cool, limpid spring is sent to the surface by the same forces that cause the mud lakes to bubble and growl; the water of every cold spring was originally steam, and the water was cleaned of impurities on its long journey to the surface The geyser field of New Zealand is more than a hundred miles long, and during our journey of twenty-four miles today we were rarely out of sight of smoking springs. But the most curious thing we have seen is the White lake, which occupies a crater caused by the earthquake of 1886. The lake has no outlet, and, until a few years ago, was a mud geyser. Then it began to fill with hot water from below. In spots the water is only warm at the surface, but in many places it is boiling The end of our three-mile walk was a government rest-house. Here we found a carriage awaiting us, and we drove seven miles to the hotel where we are spending the night. A storm was threatening when we arrived at the rest-house, and we were anxious to hurry on, but the English people with us insisted on having their afternoon tea, and we were forced to wait for them Part of the country over which we traveled today looked like the lake district of Scotland; the first lake on which we traveled reminded me of Loch Katrine, and the stage road to it was something like the Trossachs. But after we