to a mild extortion of sundry small coins, and then a motley cavalcade of children, tattooed old men, women with infants astride their backs, laughing girls, and begging half-breeds, escort us to see the wonders of the place.
What a scene of desolate grandeur! The background of limestone cliffs, with great white seams and landslips, which look like the marks of old wounds. Beneath and around a perfect vortex of most malevolent activity and boiling confusion. Sputtering pot-holes here, spouting geysers there. Roaring steam escapes, shrill, whistling fissures. Hoarse, bellowing fog-horns everywhere. On this side, fierce ebullition; on that, a gentle sputtering and simmering. Here a noiseless steaming, and there a blast as if Apollyon were bad with catarrh, and were blowing his nose in a rage; and over all, the unmistakable odour which popular legend has ever attributed to the atmosphere of the infernal regions. The presence of sulphur is further fully betokened by the beautiful yellow efflorescence and little caverns of orange crystals round most of the holes.
Here is the great Geyser itself—one of the most active in this district of incessant volcanic action. Great swelling volumes of boiling water rush up fiercely in hissing hot columns. These plash and tumble madly back, and are again shot forth, and billow over a white encrusted face of fretted rock, into a hole of mysterious depth; and as the steam is ever and anon wafted aside, the intense blue of the unfathomed depth is seen like a sapphire set in an encrustation of whitest marble.
