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.
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