village of Kouto, which is almost hidden in steam, skirt a great lake with jets of steam bursting forth from its banks, and stop at last at Rotorua, the chief town of New Zealand's hot springs.

Here there are hotels and numerous cottages. People from all parts of the southern Pacific come to bathe in the springs for their health, and there are great bath houses containing pools of this hot, bad-smelling water.

We leave our valises at the hotel and go with a guide on foot and on horseback from one wonder to another.

There are geysers of steam and water. Here is a pool of boiling, bubbling mud, which now and then shoots a column high into the air, and there is another which is always sending up what looks like paint. The earth is everywhere steaming. We step over steam cracks, and, staff in hand, follow our guide through volumes of steam so thick that we can hardly breathe.

Now we have left Rotorua and have come to Tikitera, twelve miles away. We have tied our horses and are going through the steam to where a score of great pits are sending up boiling water and mud. Look down into that whirlpool on your right! The water is black, and it steams and bubbles and spits. Be careful! If your foot slips, you may fall in and be scalded to death.

Let us go on. What a vile smell comes up with the vapor out of that pool at our feet! It has a rim of bright yellow, and its smell is like sulphur.

That is a sulphur pool;

we can taste the brimstone as we stoop over it. It seems full of boiling mud, and we can hardly see down through the steam.

Now the ground has changed from yellow to white; it

looks like salt. We pick up a bit of the earth and taste it. How it puckers our mouths! It is as though we had bitten into an unripe persimmon. The stuff is not salt; it is alum. There are bushels of alum mixed with the other minerals that come up from the springs. Some pools send up clouds of steam which smell like camphor, and others throw up mud or water in which are salt, potash, and various acids.

"the steam coming through does the cooking."

Some of the springs are cooler than others and just right for bathing. They cure rheumatism, gout, sore throat, and various skin diseases. They were used long ago by the aborigines or native New Zealanders, and now the English have erected bath houses over them and built swimming vats. The Blue Bath, for instance, is as big as a city lot, and so hot we gasp for breath as we let ourselves down into it. "The Coffee Pot " bath contains a hot, thick, brown fluid, covered with an oily scum good for rheumatism, and "The Painkiller" and others are supposed to take away pain.

There are many Maori children bathing in the pools outside the bath houses. The Maoris are the native New Zealanders; they have homes in this region, living here that they may have heat without the trouble of making a fire. They build their cabins near the boiling pools, and cook their meals on the steam coming up through

"We are interested in watching the natives."

the earth in their backyards. Each woman has a steaming box of her own sunk in the earth over one of the little steam holes or in one of the pools. The box has only slats on the bottom. The food is placed on the slats, a piece of carpet or bagging is thrown over it, and the steam coming through does the cooking. Meat, eggs, and potatoes are steamed in this way, and in late years even Christmas plum puddings are thus cooked on these little volcanoes. We are interested in watching the natives and learning

about them. They belong to the brown-skinned Malay race, but are superior to some other branches of the same race. They are far more intelligent and more civilized than the native Australians, and a finer people in

every way. They have brown skins, high cheek bones, and noses much like our own. The men are tall and broad shouldered, with big hands and feet. The women are often good looking, or would be so if they did not tattoo their foreheads, chins, and lips with blue and red ink. In former times both men and women went almost naked, and they then tattooed many

parts of their bodies; but since the English came, they have adopted our clothing, and tattooing is now dying out.

When Captain Cook landed in New Zealand, there were many Maoris. They were divided up into tribes, each having its own priests, chiefs, middle classes, common people, and slaves. They had their own religion and language. The men were fishers and hunters, and the women took care of the houses, made the clothing for the family, and worked in the fields. Some were cannibals, and the different tribes were always warring upon one another.

After the Maoris were conquered by the English, they embraced Christianity, and they are now nearly all Christians. They have their own schools, and live in villages on reservations in the two larger islands. They are governed by chiefs, but are also subject to the laws of New Zealand.

NEW CALEDONIA AND OTHER FRENCH
ISLANDS

WE

E have left Auckland and are on our way to New Caledonia, a large island belonging to France, about seven hundred miles off the eastern coast of Australia. The weather has been growing warmer ever since we left Auckland. We are sailing over summer seas in a climate similar to that inside the Great Barrier Reef. We pass Norfolk Island, an unimportant possession of England, go by atolls with cocoanut palms growing upon them, and as we approach New Caledonia, steam slowly to avoid the coral rocks and reefs which almost surround it. The reefs are a few miles out from the shore, many of them reaching not quite to the surface. The captain consults his chart every few minutes, and he almost stops the engine as we go through an opening in the reef, which leads to the beautiful harbor of Noumea (nōō-mā'a), the capital of New Caledonia.

Noumea lies on the western side of the island, right on the sea, with high mountains rising behind it. Its little houses are of wood roofed with galvanized iron; many of them have wide porches and are well shaded by palms and other tropical trees.

The French officers come out to the ship and look us over before giving us permission to go upon shore. New Caledonia is a convict settlement, and visitors are carefully watched. Thieves and other criminals from France are sent here for punishment; they are made to work, guarded by soldiers, and the island is under military rule. The