absolutely perpendicular, but nowhere more than 40 feet high; but
opposite to us on the far side of the larger lake they were bold and
craggy, and probably not less than 150 feet high. On one side there
was an expanse entirely occupied with blowing cones, and jets of
steam or vapour. The lake has been known to sink 400 feet, and a
month ago it overflowed its banks. The prominent object was fire in
motion, but the surface of the double lake was continually skinning
over for a second or two with a cooled crust of a lustrous grey-
white, like frosted silver, broken by jagged cracks of a bright
rose-colour. The movement was nearly always from the sides to the
centre, but the movement of the centre itself appeared independent
and always took a southerly direction. Before each outburst of
agitation there was much hissing and a throbbing internal roaring,
as of imprisoned gases. Now it seemed furious, demoniacal, as if no
power on earth could bind it, then playful and sportive, then for a
second languid, but only because it was accumulating fresh force.
On our arrival eleven fire fountains were playing joyously round the
lakes, and sometimes the six of the nearer lake ran together in the
centre to go wallowing down in one vortex, from which they
reappeared bulging upwards, till they formed a huge cone 30 feet
high, which plunged downwards in a whirlpool only to reappear in
exactly the previous number of fountains in different parts of the
lake, high leaping, raging, flinging themselves upwards. Sometimes
the whole lake, abandoning its usual centripetal motion, as if
impelled southwards, took the form of mighty waves, and surging
heavily against the partial barrier with a sound like the Pacific
surf, lashed, tore, covered it, and threw itself over it in clots of
living fire. It was all confusion, commotion, force, terror, glory,
majesty, mystery, and even beauty. And the colour! "Eye hath not
seen" it! Molten metal has not that crimson gleam, nor blood that