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Updated: June 2, 2025


Conspicuously active in this cause were two governors of Nagasaki, by name Mizuno and Takenaka, and the feudal chief of Shimabara, by name Matsukura. To this last is to be credited the terrible device of throwing converts into the solfataras at Unzen, and under him, also, the punishment of the "fosse" was resorted to.

Seen in the clear sunny air, these columns of water and white foam, mounting, swaying, blown by the wind into silver spray, and with attendant rainbows glittering in the light, are sights which silence even the chattering tourist for a while. Solfataras, mud volcanoes and fumaroles are counted in hundreds in the volcanic zone.

They knew that the central region of the Ika-na-Mani is essentially volcanic. It is a sieve, whose interstices furnish a passage for the earth's vapors in the shape of boiling geysers and solfataras. Paganel, who had already noticed this, called the attention of his friends to the volcanic nature of the mountain.

Numerous lakes also occupy the larger cavities in the ground; and hot-springs, steam-fumaroles and solfataras burst out in great numbers along the banks of the Roto Mahana Lake and the Kaiwaka River by which it is drained.

They rose like an amphitheater on natural terraces; their waters gradually flowed together under folds of white smoke, and corroding the edges of the semi-transparent steps of this gigantic staircase. They fed whole lakes with their boiling torrents. Farther still, beyond the hot springs and tumultuous geysers, came the solfataras. The ground looked as if covered with large pustules.

The halt lasted till two o'clock in the afternoon, then they resumed their journey; and in the evening they stopped eight miles from the mountains, and required no persuasion to sleep in the open air. Next day was one of serious difficulties. Their route lay across this wondrous region of volcanic lakes, geysers, and solfataras, which extended to the east of the Wahiti Ranges.

During the cretaceo-oolitic period this certainly appears to have been the case at the Puente del Inca, judging from the number of intercalated lava-streams in the lower 3,000 feet of strata; but generally, the volcanic orifices seem at this time to have existed as submarine solfataras, and were certainly quiescent compared with their state during the accumulation of the porphyritic conglomerate formation.

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