Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
not so regular in outline, but appearing to be much hotter, as they were in a continual state
of active ebullition. At intervals of a few minutes a great escape of steam or gas took place,
throwing up a column of water three or four feet high.
We then went to the mud-springs, which are about a mile off, and are still more curious.
On a sloping tract of ground in a slight hollow is a small lake of liquid mud, in patches of
blue, red, or white, and in many places boiling and bubbling most furiously. All around on
the indurated clay, are small wells and craters full of boiling mud. These seem to be forming
continually, a small hole appearing first, which emits jets of steam and boiling mud, which
on hardening, forms a little cone with a crater in the middle. The ground for some distance
is very unsafe, as it is evidently liquid at a small depth, and bends with pressure like thin ice.
At one of the smaller marginal jets which I managed to approach, I held my hand to see if it
was really as hot as it looked, when a little drop of mud that spurted on to my finger scalded
like boiling water. A short distance off there was a flat bare surface of rock, as smooth and
hot as an oven floor, which was evidently an old mud-pool dried up and hardened. For hun-
dreds of yards round where there were banks of reddish and white clay used for whitewash,
it was still so hot close to the surface that the hand could hardly bear to be held in cracks a
few inches deep, and from which arose a strong sulphureous vapour. I was informed that
some years back a French gentleman who visited these springs ventured too near the liquid
mud, when the crust gave way and he was engulfed in the horrible caldron.
This evidence of intense heat so near the surface over a large tract of country, was very
impressive, and I could hardly divest myself of the notion that some terrible catastrophe
might at any moment devastate the country. Yet it is probable that all these apertures are
really safety-valves, and that the inequalities of the resistance of various parts of the earth's
crust, will always prevent such an accumulation of force as would be required to upheave
and overwhelm any extensive area. About seven miles west of this is a volcano which was
in eruption about thirty years before my visit, presenting a magnificent appearance and cov-
ering the surrounding country with showers of ashes. The plains around the lake formed by
the intermingling and decomposition of volcanic products are of amazing fertility, and with
a little management in the rotation of crops might be kept in continual cultivation. Rice is
now grown on them for three or four years in succession, when they are left fallow for the
same period, after which rice or maize can be again grown. Good rice produces thirty-fold,
and coffee trees continue bearing abundantly for ten or fifteen years, without any manure
and with scarcely any cultivation.
I was delayed a day by incessant rain, and then proceeded to Panghu, which I reached just
before the daily rain began at 11
A.M
. After leaving the summit level of the lake basin, the
