This place has a special interest on account of its boiling springs,—not that they are striking in themselves, but because there are so few places in the group where any trace of such phenomena is found. I have seen no other boiling springs except those at Ngau, but I hear there are some at Loma Loma, and there is a hot stream in Viti Levu called Wai Mbasanga. Here, too, occasional shocks of earthquake suggest that volcanic action is only dormant and may reawaken some day. The springs are quite boiling, but (as was the case of those we saw on the isle of Ngau) a stream of cold water flows close to them, and the people save themselves the trouble of getting firewood by boiling all their food in the springs. They take their crabs, bunches of bananas, yams or _taro_, wrap them up in banana-leaves and deposit them in the boiling spring; then they go and bathe some way off where the hot and cold streams have mixed, and return to find their dinner ready cooked. The water tastes utterly disgusting and very salt, but the food boiled in it is excellent; and the people who bathe here are free from many diseases. There are springs all along the shore for half a mile, just at high-water mark. The three principal ones bubble up in a circle like a small crater. They are intermittent, and the highest makes a fountain about two or three feet high. There used to be about fifteen springs in this circle, and the people came from far and near to cook their food, especially if they had any _bodies_ to boil. But in 1863 Tui Wainoonoo, a neighbouring chief, came and besieged the large strongly fortified town of Eroi further up the lake. He could not take it, and raised the siege just when the defenders were reduced to starvation, having only a few lemons for food. He, however, captured sixteen men, and Ramasi-Alewa, the old lady to whom the springs belonged. She was past seventy, and must have been very tough and smoke-dried; but as in her young days she had been a regular Joan of Arc, leading her tribe to battle, and herself fighting hand to hand with a hatchet, he determined to eat her. So he had her cooked with the sixteen men, and made a great feast; and then, to spite the people, before leaving the district, he attempted to choke up all the springs—in which amiable effort he partially succeeded. These springs were also a favourite place for depositing all superfluous babies, especially girls, who never got much of a welcome. They were popped in alive like so many lobsters, and treated with quite as little ceremony. I am told that there is an intermittent cold spring on a conical hill on the opposite side of the harbour. Some of the hot springs bubble up through the salt water below high-water mark.[39]