Antique gelatin photographic print maker marked and captioned by The famed Burton Brothers

AGE = Circa 1860-1890

SIZE = 195 mm by 145 mm

The Pink Terrace, or Te Otukapuarangi ("The fountain of the clouded sky") in Maori, & the White Terrace, also known as Te Tarata ("the tattooed rock"), were natural wonders of NZ

They were reportedly the largest silica sinter deposits on earth

Until recently, they were lost & thought destroyed in the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera, while new hydrothermal attractions formed to the south-west i.e. Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley

The Pink and White Terraces were formed by upwelling geothermal springs containing a cocktail of silica-saturated, near-neutral pH chloride water

These 2 world-famous springs were part of a group of hot springs & geysers, chiefly along an easterly ridge named Pinnacle Ridge (or the Steaming Ranges by Mundy)

The Pink and the White Terrace springs were around 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) apart

The Pink Terrace lay 4/5ths of the way down the lake on the western shore, facing east to south-east

The pink appearance over the mid & upper basins (near the colour of a rainbow trout) was due to antimony & arsenic sulfides, although the Pink Terrace also contained gold in ore-grade concentrations

Burton Brothers (1866–1914) was one of New Zealand's most important nineteenth-century photographic studios and was based in Dunedin. It was founded by Walter John Burton (1836–1880) in 1866 as the Grand Photographic Saloon & Gallery and was situated in Princes Street, Dunedin

The Brothers pioneered the use of travelling darkrooms, commissioning a special photographic van to be built in 1869 which served both as a mobile darkroom & as a safe method for transporting their heavy & delicate equipment