Each fresh step is a new revelation. We look above; all is a glistening, glowing mass of unearthly brilliancy. We look down and who may describe the ineffable beauty of those translucent basins of opaline-tinted water? The blue is like nothing else "in the heavens above, or the earth beneath." To what, then, can it be likened? It is a colour unique—sui generis—never again to be forgotten. Lapis lazuli is muddy before it. Opal, with its iridescence, gleams not so perfectly soft and lovely. The azure vault of heaven itself has not the dainty delicacy of that pearly tint. It is, in a word, exceeding beautiful; and it must be seen to be understood. No man can describe it adequately. Nay, not even Ruskin, master though he be, could fitly picture it. And there is not one or two, but tens and twenties of these chaliced cups. The saucers of the gods, surely, these? The tea service of the Grecian goddesses? Can you not fancy Venus reposing on yonder crystalline couch, with its tracery of marble fretwork, its pearly lace woven by fairy fingers, dipping her dainty lips to sip the liquid gems that gleam so soft under the sunbeams? Bah! what need for metaphor? As I recall the scene I feel inclined to throw down the pen, and feel how utterly all endeavour must fail to reproduce the picture in words.
With a north-east wind blowing, we were fortunate enough to behold the White Terrace in one of the rare intervals, when the boiling fount (the origin of all this pearly overflow) was empty and dry.
