Rotorua, the Yellowstone of New Zealand, with its hot springs baths and geysers, is the chief health resort of the Dominion. The hotels and even the sanatoriums are controlled by the government.
Wairoa never plays unless it is given a barrel of soap—then it usually goes up in great style. But except on special occasions the government does not permit it to be dosed, as this weakens a geyser.
Joking aside, the baths are wonderful. The Rachel is a boiling cauldron of enormous depth with a flow of fifty thousand gallons daily. The water evidently contains much sulphuretted hydrogen, for a smell of bad eggs fills the air all around it. The visitor is usually disgusted until he steps into the pool. Then his skin seems to have turned to satin, and he is as comfortable as though on beds of rose leaves. The Coffee Pot pool is covered with an oily slime and the water is thick, brown, and muddy, but it gives great relief to any one suffering from rheumatism. In the Spout Bath, the patient goes down into a sort of cave, where the warm water pours on him from a spout above. The boiling water from one of the springs is mixed with waters of a cold lake to make the temperature endurable. Others of the baths have such strong mineral properties that one must be examined by a doctor before he can enter them.
For my guide in visiting the geysers, I have one of the Maoris, many of whom live in this region. I chose a woman who spoke fair English to take me through the crackling, steaming, rumbling, spurting region about me. She leads me from one wonder to another. Here is a pool of boiling, bubbling mud which now and then shoots a column high into the air. That great round vat with the white walls is made of the silica and other minerals thrown up by a geyser called the Brain Pot. That vast pool in which the yellow fluid seethes and boils is known as the Champagne Pool; its contents fizz like so much champagne, and the gases now and then throw the water up to a height of six or eight feet. The walls are of different colours, here white, there dark red, and there yellow with sulphur. We go to see the Pohutu Geyser, which formerly twice a day sent a majestic column of water high into the air for from twenty minutes to three hours at a time. But today Pohutu sulks and is entirely unreliable, though a way has been found to make it perform on demand. When some distinguished visitor comes along, the officials give the geyser an emetic of several barrels of soap, and then it plays up in great style. And that reminds me of the Pack-horse Mud Geyser, so named because it was not active until one day a pack horse fell into it. Before that it was simply a quiet pool of mud containing sulphuric acid.
One of the most remarkable of all the geysers of this whole region was the Waimangu, which during the years of its activity was undoubtedly the greatest wonder of the kind in the world. It was not discovered until 1901 and for five years after that it played almost every day. It was fierce “play,” though, for, unlike the ordinary geyser, the Waimangu flung up black mud and stones, as well as scalding water, sometimes to the height of fifteen hundred feet. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, it stopped, though it is believed that it may at any time break forth again. Once two girls and a guide were caught in the flood of scalding mud and were killed. Now one sees there only a hollow of some two acres covered with black, steaming water.
But come and take a trip with me into the mouth of Hell itself. This is a region about twelve miles from Rotorua. We sail across the lake, passing over what was evidently once a volcanic crater, then take horses across country to Tikitere. As we near it we see great columns of steam rising into the air. We tie our horses and, staff in hand, plunge into the vapour. We are in the midst of acres of boiling springs separated by thin walls upon which we walk, looking down into the terrible commotion below.
Here is a whirlpool. The water is as black as ink. It boils and steams and bubbles and spits. It is hotter than the “burning fiery furnace” into which King Nebuchadnezzar cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Watch out, for if your foot slips you will be scalded to death.
Now we are on a great yellow mound looking into a sulphur pool, the gases of which almost sicken us as we stoop over. The pool is filled with boiling mud. The steam is so thick we can hardly see through it. Be careful where you step. A girl slipped into that vat the other day and came out cooked.
Look at this hole! See how it churns up mud and oil. It makes a noise like running machinery and the Maoris have named it the Donkey Engine.