These Seem To Be Forming Continually, A Small Hole Appearing First, Which Emits Jets Of Steam And Boiling Mud, Which Upon 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 hundreds of yards around 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 covering 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 road is carried along the slope of a fine forest ravine. The descent is a long one, so that I estimated the village to be not more than 1,500 feet above the sea, yet I found the morning temperature often 69°, the same as at Tondano at least 600 or 700 feet higher.

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