“Here, father—Doctor Instow,” cried the boy; and they came up and tried the water in turn, and looked at each other.
“Regular volcanic water,” said the doctor. “Why that would be a fortune in England; people would take it and bathe in it, and believe it would cure them of every ill under the sun, from a broken leg up to bilious fever. There’s no doubt where that comes from. Look how full it is of gas.”
He pointed to a stream of tiny bubbles rising from the bottom of the glass.
“Sea-water ain’t it, sir?” said Edward respectfully; “but how did it get up there?”
“Sea-water? no, my man. Beautifully clear, but strongly charged with sulphur, magnesia, soda, and iron. Which spring did it come from?”
“That one which shoots out into the pool, sir,” said one of the men.
“And is the other the same?” cried Jack.
“No, sir; cold as ice and quite fresh.”
Jack and the doctor climbed up to see the sources of the two springs, finding the hot not many yards from the edge of the rocky wall, where it was bubbling up from a little basin fringed with soft pinky-white stone, while the bottom of the pellucid source, which was too hot for the hand to be plunged in, was ornamented with beautiful crystals of the purest sulphur.
The source of the cold stream of fresh water they did not find, for it came dancing down the dark ravine, which was choked with tree-ferns, creepers, and interlacing boughs laden with the loveliest orchids, and their progress was completely stopped when they had advanced some hundred yards or so.