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In remote times the pastoral Phocians had fortified the place against the incursions of the Thessalians, and the decayed remains of the wall and gates of their ancient garrison were still existent in the middle of the pass; while, by marsh and morass, to render the place yet more impassable, they had suffered the hot-springs to empty themselves along the plain, on the Thessalian side, and the quagmire was still sodden and unsteady.
I wished to discover the boiling vapour and the coloured springs which many travellers assert they have seen here. All the hot-springs are united with a circumference of 800 to 900 paces: several of them are very remarkable, but the majority insignificant. They are situated in the angle of an immense valley at the foot of a hill, behind which extends a chain of mountains.
They were the buildings of the Riuzanjita hot-springs; in summer a sort of secular monastery for pilgrims to the Dragon peak. They were tenanted now, we had been told, by a couple of watchmen.
Amongst such eruptions of hot-water and steam we might expect the formation of siliceous sinter, and the deposition of sulphur and other minerals; nor will our expectations be disappointed. For here we have the wonderful terraces of siliceous sinter deposited by the waters entering Roto Mahana as they descend from the numerous hot-springs or pools near its margin.
The gaiety of his nature drew itself from hot-springs of hopefulness: our arrival in England, our interviews there, my majority Burgundy, my revisitation of Germany these events to come gave him the aspect children wear out a- Maying or in an orchard.
The one was an Apogon, the other an Ambassis, and to each, from the heat of its habitat, he assigned the specific name of "thermalis." In addition to the two fishes above named, a loche Cobitis thermalis, and a carp, Nuria thermoicos, were found in the hot-springs of Kannea, at a heat 40° Cent., 114° Fahr., and a roach, Leuciscus thermalis, when the thermometer indicated 50° Cent, 122° Fahr.
The bogs are very good in frost, except where the hot-springs rise; but as yet there had been no frost this year, save just enough to make the blackbirds look big in the morning. In a hearty black-frost they look small, until the snow falls over them.
The latter rock is prevalent, both in descending from the Rincon del Diablo southward to the hot-springs of Mariara, and towards the banks of the lake of Valencia, and in advancing on the east towards the group of Buenavista, the Silla of Caracas and Cape Codera.
The next morning I went to see the hot-springs and mud volcanoes, for which this place is celebrated. A picturesque path among plantations and ravines brought us to a beautiful circular basin about forty feet in diameter, bordered by a calcareous ledge, so uniform and truly curved, that it looked like a work of art.
'It's the multiplication table or the day of judgment or the volcanoes and hot-springs, and what-you-may-call-ems, in the centre of the earth; and they'll go on over and over again always coming back to the same point, like a merry-go-round; but this one is quite different. There's no bounds to his delusions. We're at the North Pole one minute, and digging up diamonds in Africa the next.
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