At this moment the orb of day was shining warm and brightly over our heads, when suddenly a pink halo in front of us seemed to dazzle the eye, and in another moment Te Otukapurangi, the "Fountain of the Clouded Sky," or the Pink Terrace, rose majestically from the very edge of the shining green water of the lake in all its gorgeous beauty. Now, I have attempted to describe Te Tarata, albeit but faintly, and now that I have Te Otukapurangi before my mind it seems difficult as to which to assign the palm of beauty. Both terraces are unique in their way; both wonderful monuments of nature's grandest handiwork. It seems to me, however, that in Te Tarata we have all that is divinely sublime, ethereal, fairy-like, and lovely--a structure chaste and grand enough to serve as steps to heaven. Te Otukapurangi, on the other hand, has a rich, gorgeous, oriental look about it, which reminds one of those fanciful creations we read of in Eastern tales, and which were constructed of chalcedony, agate, alabaster, onyx, jasper, and lapis-lazuli, studded with precious gems, and inhabited by beautiful princesses, gnomes, and genii, and evolved from the fanciful minds of those gaunt, dark-skinned men who, reared on the sandy deserts of "Araby the Blest," carried fire and sword over the Eastern world, and built up an empire which rivalled in splendour even the most wondrous of their fabulous tales, which still take the mind captive, as it were, and lead it away like an _ignis fatuus_, a fleeting mirage, or a fitful dream. But there is nothing evanescent in the Pink Terrace; it is adamantine in construction, and grandly beautiful enough to have graced the approach to the Temple of Solomon the Magnificent, the Palace of the Queen of Sheba, or the Mosque of Haroun Al Raschid the Superb.
The formation of Te Otukapurangi differs somewhat from that of the White Terrace, but, like Te Tarata, it is semicircular in general outline; but the successive terraces of which it is built up rise more abruptly from the lake, while they are, as a rule, higher above each other and more massive in appearance. Hence the deposits of silica have assumed the same general formation, and each terrace is gracefully and marvellously shaped, with rounded edges, which sweep about in waving curves, as if they had been fashioned after one grand and unique design. The various buttress-like masses which support the fringed edges of the terraces bend over, as it were, and form miniature grottoes, resplendent with festoons of pink-tinted silica and rose-coloured stalactites, which appear to have been woven together by nature into an intricate network, and then crystallized into their present shape, which, when examined closely, is as varied as is the whole design symmetrical and beautiful. Here the successive deposits or layers of silica rock do not assume, like those of Te Tarata, a wonderful combination of delicate lacework around the edges of the terraces, but the silicious laminations appear even thinner, and remind one of the corrugated surface of pink satin rep. On the wide platform of each succeeding terrace there are flat, irregularly-shaped tablets set in a fretwork of silica-like cords, while innumerable pools or salmon-coloured basins, all exquisitely and quaintly formed, with curving, shell-shaped margins, are resplendent with water of the purest and darkest blue. It is, however, the variegated tints of this wondrous structure which render it even more remarkable than the gracefully symmetrical proportions of its incomparable designs. As we gazed upon it, and the blue-tinted water came rippling and falling from terrace to terrace in miniature cascades, Te Otukapurangi looked radiant in its sparkling mantle of delicate pink; and as the golden rays of the sun shot far and wide, it changed with every shade of light, with brilliant hues of pink, amber, carmine, and yellow, which shone with a dazzling and almost metallic lustre as they flashed and palpitated, as it were, in the warm, glowing air, and seemed to vie in splendour with the blue of the heavens, the green tints of the lake, and the countless bright colours of the surrounding vegetation, which spread out far and wide over the surrounding hills.