THE HOT LAKES.
1. By the medium of mere words it is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the grandeur—the supreme loveliness we may say—of the enchanting and ravishing beauty of the Hot Lakes of the Northern Island. (You can cook potatoes in them.)
2. When a stranger stands for the first time before the White Terrace he is struck dumb in admiration.
3. The wonderful lithic incrustation before him surpasses the wildest flight of Eastern imagination.
The delicate tracery and champfered fretwork of the stony drapery hold him spell-bound with enchantment.
He sees before him foaming cascades that have been mesmerized into marble. The tiers of snow-white basins, like steps of alabaster or Parian stone, are creations of nature never to be obliterated from the feeblest mind. (A friend suggests that they may be partially obliterated by a whisky cocktail.)
4. Each basin with its limpid contents, more delicate and iridescent than the shades of opal, appeals to the senses as a petrologic poem. As a background you have the battlements of a craggy mountain, looming up with awe-inspiring majesty, also reminding one ofnatural creations which can never be obliterated from the feeblest mind. What revelations of beauty! N.B. If so disposed, the visitors may take a bath in the cerulean depths of Te Terata. (Before doing so, we privately advise him to make his will, for he will be boiled ‘as sure as eggs is eggs.’)
5. Oh! pinky white terraces where you lay in marble bows, ‘which are described as sensuous heavens.’ Oh! polished walls of alabaster and powdered silica, like the finest silver sand. In a glade, Nature has supplied a dressing-room sheltered from the luminosity of the heavenly orb.
(I undressed in a small clearing amongst almost leafless shrubs. It was wet and dirty underfoot, and open to the wind in all directions. It was even open to the gaze of our guide Sophia. The alabaster wall of the bath took so much skin off one of my knees, that for the next fortnight I had to pay my devotions standing.)
(When we had finished, Sophia had a bath.)