afe, 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