We spent a considerable time paddling about the White Terrace. At one pool Sophia showed us some sparrows which she had placed in the water to petrify. Strangers are not supposed to remove the stalactitic formations and various petrifactions which are met with on the terraces, but a few shillings will usually enable you to procure a few specimens.
A short distance from the White Terrace we saw several boiling caldrons, which every now and then would shoot up columns of water twenty or thirty feet in height.
Farther on, we met a dug-out canoe and two boatmen who had brought our lunch. The potatoes had, of course, been boiled in a hot spring.
Sophia told us that the last party she had the honour of conducting were missionaries. One old man had given her a drink of brandy, and when in the dug-out, where you have to sit fore and aft, had placed his head in her lap.
‘I told the old gentleman,’ said Sophia, ‘that drinking brandy and putting his head into the lap of an unmarried girl did not go well with a white necktie. What do you think he said? why, he whispered, “Never mind, Sophia,” and he gave me a squeeze.’
Sophia in talking to us always called us ‘poor boys.’ Mac, who was getting bald, did not like it.
After lunch, we carefully balanced ourselves in the dug-out, Mac putting his head in Sophia’s lap, and set sail on Rotomahana. This is a little round lake bounded on all sides with low hills. Most of them are steaming with hot springs, the water from which comes down into the lake, so that the lake itself is hot.
Although the water is quite warm, and has a nasty taste, some sort of beetles appear to live in it. The trip across the lake is one where everything depends on the accuracy of your balance. There is no turning round, and Mac having once put his head in Sophia’s lap, he had to keep it there, or else run the risk of overturning the boat.
The Pink Terrace on the other side of the lake is far more pink in description and books than it is in reality. On the top there is a boiling pond, and below this comes the staircase of basins just like the White Terrace. We had a bath here. We unstripped in a grove of Ti-trees, and then had our first dip in a pool which was moderately warm. From this we ascended, step by step, to other pools which were warmer.
It would take a long time to describe all we saw. One little valley we went up was filled with small mud volcanoes, one of which was called the Porridge-Pot. This contained a beautiful bluish-grey creamy mud which was gently simmering. All of these had certain medicinal qualities attributed to them. The Porridge-Pot was good for dysentery. I took a spoonful of it. It was smooth, warm, and inky.