When we had feasted our eyes upon the chaste marvels of Te Tarata, the ladies filed slowly away, as if spellbound, while we (the sterner sex) walked leisurely down the crystal steps to about the centre of the terrace, where lay an oval-shaped basin, about forty feet long by twenty feet broad, filled to the brim with water of the purest blue. In the midst of a small clump of _manuka_, which clustered on the very margin of the terrace, as if eager to participate in its beauty, we divested ourselves of our outward garb of civilization, and stood beneath the glowing rays of the sun in the primitive costume of man free and untrammelled, as when "wild in the woods the noble savage ran." It was now that I fully realized that soft, soothing, magical effect which one invariably experiences when devoid of all restraint, one is about to partake of a pleasure which one has never experienced before. To look around at the sublime wonders of Te Tarata, and then plunge head first into the alabaster pool of liquid turquoise, and to feel that the soft, pellucid liquid that had been for thousands of years, nay, countless ages, building up that wondrous monument of unrivalled splendour would wrap me in its warm embrace, and impart, if only for a moment, its soft, soothing influence to the heated body, was a pleasure, the anticipation of which only seemed to make me the more eager to revel in its enjoyment. There was not a single speck to mar the delicate beauty of the crystal basin, the blue lustre of the water, nor the white virgin purity of the silicious pearls around its brink. One glance at the enchanting scene around me, and, as I shot beneath the shining surface, like an arrow from a bow, the soft, heated water closed over me, and for the instant I seemed to be gliding into the realms of eternal bliss, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest. The illusion, however, was only momentary, but I would have liked it to continue for the rest of my natural life, and then, in default of a better place hereafter, I would have been content to paddle in that pool to all eternity, floating on its surface, diving into its depths, and basking on the pearly margin of its brink. Its water was just warm enough to render it delightfully pleasant, and it seemed to wrap itself round the body in gently waving folds, while, as I glided from point to point, streaks, as it were, of cold water would bathe the skin with refreshing effect, and then a soft, tepid wave would impart a voluptuous sensation of glowing warmth.[33]