"Most of the villages are near hot springs, not so much for the curative properties of the waters as for the convenience of cooking food without the trouble of collecting fuel, or even building a fire. At one village where we stopped for dinner there were twelve or fifteen springs of all temperatures from tepid to boiling; we bathed in one spring while the potatoes for our dinner were being boiled in another not a dozen yards away. Around the springs, and along the path by which we walked from them to the house, there were cracks and holes in the ground from which steam issued, and occasionally little jets of boiling water. It gave us an uncanny feeling to walk along this path, and we agreed that it was not a nice place for promenading in the dark.
THE BATHS AT ROTOMAHANA.
"The proprietor of the hotel accompanied us, and said it was not safe to stray from the path, as one was liable to break through the thin crust and find his feet plunged into hot water which had accumulated beneath the surface. He showed us a pool which is the special resort of the Maoris, and where half a dozen of them were bathing, the bathers being watched by as many more of their kinsmen, who were squatted on flat stones erected over the steam-jets at the edge of the pool. The temperature of the water is about ninety degrees, but it rises occasionally to a hundred and more. We found a secluded pool, and took a bath there; after the bath we greatly enjoyed a luscious melon which our host brought us.
HOTEL LIFE AT THE HOT LAKES.
"It is a curious sensation to stand on a hill and look over a considerable area of country which may easily be imagined to be undergoing a cooking process from one end to the other. Jets of steam rise from the ground in a great many places; some of them continuously, others in quick or slow jets, and with intervals of a second or so, or perhaps fractions of a second, and others with dignified intervals of several minutes. Some of the geysers threw up columns of water fifteen or twenty feet in height; but, on the whole, they were less interesting than the geysers of Yellowstone Park in America. At one place the sulphur fumes were so stifling that it was next to impossible to look into the holes in the ground, and only possible by holding the nose firmly and looking while the breath was retained.