Read  once  again  Froude's  description  of  the  White
Terrace.  "A  crystal  staircase,"  he  calls  it.  "glitter-
ing and  stainless  as  if  it  were  ice,  spreading  out  like
an  open  fan ....  and  projecting  at  the  bottom  into
a  lake,  where  it  was  perhaps  200  yards  wide.  The
summit  was  concealed  behind  fountains  of  steam ....
The  stairs  were  about  twenty  in  number,  the  height
of  each  being  six  or  seven  feet.  They  were  of  uneven
breadth,  twenty,  thirty,  fifty  feet  or  even  more ;  each
step  down  being  always  perpendicular,  and  all
forming  arcs  of  a  circle,  of  which  the  crater  was  the
centre."  And  Domett  tells  us  how  each  of  these
great  steps  was :

"  .     .     .    a  wide  basin,  brimmed
With  water  brilliant,  yet  in  hue
The  tenderest,  delicate,  harebell  blue,
Deepening  to  violet,"

while  still  another  observer  has  recorded  the  beauty
of  the  water  as  it  flowed,  falling  "in  a  curtain  of
glittering  drops  from  the  fringes  of  crystal  and
glassy  stalactites,  which  form  the  margin  of  all  the
basins."  The  Pink  Terrace  was  not  quite  so  large,
but  some  spectators  found  it  even  more  beautiful.
