(ANNA) Ohinemutu (Rotorua), New Zealand, 12th June 1888

Palace Hotel
Ohinemutu
Tuesday, June 12th 1888

Dear Mamie,

We arrived here last Saturday about 1.30, having left Auckland last Friday morning at eight o'clock AM. We reached Oxford about 5 o'clock the same evening, and slept the night there, and started for this at half past seven on Saturday morning. The rail-road does not go beyond Oxford, so we had to finish our journey in a vehicle they call a coach.

It is something like an ordinary carriage, but has a roof to it, and leather curtains all round. the coachbox is quite low down and there is room for two beside the driver. General Algar and I sat on the box and I had to sit between him and the driver for fear I should be bumped out. Mother was inside and there was a man and his wife, of the name of White, inside too. They are pleasant people and we have seen a good deal of them since we came here.

Wednesday

I had to leave off writing last night, there was so much talking going on. You see it costs such a lot in these hotels to have a private sitting room, that unless we are staying some time in a place, we never have one. The public sitting room in here is very small and the Whites are generally in it, which makes it hard to write, and our bedroom is too small to sit in.

The window opens onto a balcony, that runs round two sides of the house, and from this balcony we can look across the road, down the hotel garden, at the bottom of which are some hot baths, then across some flat ground, mostly covered with manuka scrub, a few houses and gum trees, which reaches to the shorse of Lake Rotorua, on the far side of which is some more flat ground, and then some blue hills.

All through the manuka scrub rise puffs of steam, from mud holes or springs, in fact the whole country round is steaming more or less. I have been taking a sketch from the balcony, which is mainly finished. I am afraid it is rather a daub, but it will at any rate serve to give you some idea of the place.

The baths here are simply delightful, and there are some small ones belonging to the hotel, where we can go as often as we like, and pay nothing. Then there are also Madam Rachael's Bath, the Priest's Bath, and the Blue Bath, belonging to a Government establishment.*1 I haven't been to the first two yet, but I have been to the Blue Bath twice.

It is large, about 40 ft by 20 wide, and 4ft 6in at the deepest end. The bath itself is open to the air, but the dressing boxes are roofed in. Bathing gowns are never worn, which seemed to me rather disgusting, as several ladies often bathe together. However, I found when I got there, that once I was in the water it didn't much matter what I had on as the water is so opaque that it is seldom possible to see a foot below the surface.

The water is quite warm, not to say hot, and is of a beautiful blue colour, rather a greeish, milky blue, the colour of a very milky opal. The water is supposed to be good for rheumatism and sunburn.

ED:

1

The Rotorua Baths

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 4235, 9 January 1883

There is a pool of opaque water, strongly impregnated with various minerals. It is named the "While Sulphur Bath." The gas that rises from its surface is said to be similar to laughing gas. "Painkiller" is the name given to an adjoining pool. As a bath it is credited with several remarkable cures. Unfortunately it kills as well as cures, and might with equal propriety be termed the "Man Killer" for a poor fellow who went too near the friable brink of the boiling pool, to adjust the flow into the bath, slipped in; he scrambled out, but the bank again gave way, aud though he again dragged himself out and staggered home to the hotel, when his under clothing was removed, his skin came with it, and he died in a few days.

A little further along the shore is a barren patch of ground containing inumerable openings bubbling up with water. Sulphur cups are found ranging from one to twelve inches in diameter. The temperature of the water in most of these cups is low, though it occasionally reaches the boiling point. They all seem to be boiling; the eye cannot distinguish the hot from the cold; tho boiling ones may, however, be readily detected by inserting a finger. The cups themselves are formed of clay, and sulphur in ever varying proportions, in some cases nearly pure clay, in others nearly pure sulphur. Close by, are others culled "Cream Cups." and another the "Coffee Pot." The appearance of these liquids is certainly that of cream and coffee: but the odours they emit do not tempt a visitor to taste.

In the immediate neighbourhood of these sights, the Government has built a bathing establishment, where two kinds of baths may be obtained. The one "Pukunitanga," also known as the Priest's Bath, from the circumstance of a priest having bathed in it a couple of bouts daily, for three months, thereby directing a perfect cure of a bad case of chronic rheumatism: the other is "Whangapipiro," commonly known as Madame Rachel's Bath from the reputed effect its mineral constituent have on the complexion of persistent bathors, in making them beautiful.