NEW ZEALAND'S WONDERLAND
In the middle of the North Island of New Zealand is a marvellous
district, stretching from White Island, in the Bay of Plenty, to
the active volcano of Ngaruhoe, a hundred and fifty miles to the
south, and varying in breadth from ten to twenty miles. Throughout
the whole of this area no one knows what will happen next. Strange
underground rumblings are heard; earthquake shocks are felt; in
places the whole countryside is puffing out volumes of steam; and
only twenty-seven years ago, a mountain, believed for centuries
to be quite harmless, suddenly burst into violent eruption, and
destroyed three villages with over a hundred Maoris and several
Europeans. It is all very interesting: but as one man who lives
close to a boiling lake explained to me, you can hardly enjoy
living there, because you are always close to forces that no one
really understands.
[Illustration: LAKE ROTORUA. _To face page 179._]
For the tourist the centre from which to see all the wonders is
Rotorua--a very new town of straight streets at right angles to one
another. The houses are of wood, roofed with corrugated iron: it
is hardly safe to build with any other material in Rotorua, as two
feet below the surface you are always liable to come upon a spring
of hot water.
The town is owned by the Government, which has built and maintains
a hospital and sanatorium and fine bath-houses, surrounded by
extensive and well laid-out grounds. In the grounds are planted
many firs and gums and tall Australian wattles. When I saw them,
the early-flowering wattles were a glory of golden blossom and
delicate green leaves under the bright blue sky of a New Zealand
winter. There are flower-beds with daffodils and other bulbs,
rose-trees, and all the flowers of an English garden; also good
tennis lawns and bowling-greens, and both town and gardens are set
by the shores of a big shining lake. Round the lake are low, rather
bare green hills, and on one side a mountain of two thousand feet.
The first thing about Rotorua that strikes the visitor as strange
is the smell of sulphur, which greets you even before the train
stops at the railway station, and which you never lose while you
remain in the place. When you walk out to see the town, your second
surprise is the steam. It is not actually in the streets; but less
than two miles away, behind a long avenue of gum-trees, you see
masses of steam constantly rising in larger or smaller columns, and
by the lake and away on the opposite side, more puffs of steam. The
steam comes from hot springs and hot rivulets, which you find side
by side with streams of cold water, from pools of boiling mud, and
from fascinating geysers.
A regular cluster of all these marvels is to be seen beyond
the gum-trees, at Whaka, in a few acres of rocky white ground,
overgrown with thickets of stunted "manuka" scrub, with its tiny
evergreen leaves and rough brown stem. There is a large Maori
settlement here, and another close to the cold water of Rotorua
Lake, among more boiling pools and springs.
The Maoris have always loved the hot water, and Maori villages
have existed here long before Europeans thought of making a town
and using Rotorua as a health resort. The Maoris use the hot pools
to bathe in, and the Maori women wash their clothes in the hot
streams, rubbing the things with soap on a convenient stone, and
then boiling them in a still hotter stream close at hand. They
even use the springs for cooking. They fix a wooden box over a
steaming patch of soil; inside the box they place the kettle or the
pot filled with meat and vegetables, cover the whole with coarse
sacking and leave the food to simmer.
As you walk about these strange places, the ground, sprinkled
with sulphur, alum, red or yellow ochre, is hot under your feet.
At Whaka you unexpectedly come upon deep holes where dark grey
mud is always boiling. In one corner is a large pool of oily mud
boiling perpetually in circles, and as it boils, the mud goes
leaping up into the air like a company of frogs. There are many
geysers here, but they are less active than formerly, and the most
wonderful--which, with the help of bars of soap thrown down its
throat, used to play always in honour of any royal personage--has
not played for several years.
How am I to describe a geyser? You walk on hot ground up to a
low mound of white rock with a round hole in the middle of it.
You look into the hole, and see, far below, bubbling water, with
steam rising from it--very innocent apparently. Presently you are
warned to stand back, and up comes the hot water, rushing through
the geyser's throat, straight at first, then sloping outwards, and
rising to any height from two feet to a hundred, in a beautiful
spreading column of sparkling drops, curving over at the top like
an ostrich feather; and round the water and above it steam rises
in clouds. Some geysers play with absolute regularity, every four
minutes or every half hour or at some other fixed time; others are
more capricious, and play only once or twice a day, and at quite
irregular intervals. I waited a whole afternoon hoping that the
best of the Whaka geysers would play, and in the end it did, and up
gushed the hot water to a height of forty feet or so--a magnificent
display of sparkling diamonds. Most of these hot waters contain
sulphur and other minerals, and bathing in them is an excellent
cure for rheumatism, skin complaints and other ailments. In Rotorua
you can even have a delightful bath of liquid mud, which is like
grey cream mixed with oil, and makes one's skin feel as soft as
silk.
The railroad ends at Rotorua. Beyond, you must either drive in
coach or motor, ride on horseback, or go in a steam launch across
the lake.
The country round is singularly desolate and almost uninhabited.
Mile after mile the roads run between low hills covered with
bracken and manuka scrub, with here and there some scanty tussock
grass. Many thousands of pines, larches, gums and birches have been
planted by prisoners who are kept in camps among the hills, and
more trees are being planted all the time and are growing well; so,
in a few years, the countryside will look less dreary.
Among the low undulating hills other solitary hills stand out, of
strange forbidding shape, either flat-topped ridges or cones--most
of them extinct volcanoes, or not quite extinct even now: as from
some of them puffs of steam are always rising, not from the tops
of the hills, but from cracks on the hillsides. In some places
the scattered puffs are concentrated in great blowholes: you hear
a mighty roar inside the hill, and from a narrow throat-hole
a gigantic mass of steam comes pouring out perpetually--the
safety-valve of some internal machine.
At Waimangu, seventeen miles from Rotorua, I was shown the spot
where two girls and a man were all killed by a geyser a few years
ago. The girls had been warned not to go too close, but they were
anxious to take photographs and disregarded the warning. The guide
sprang forward to pull them back, when suddenly up spouted the
geyser to the extraordinary height of fifteen hundred feet, and the
boiling water dashed down upon them all and carried them away and
killed them in an instant. Since that tragedy the geyser has not
played again, but a blowhole close by is beginning to send out jets
of water as well as steam, and may in time develop into a geyser.
Waimangu is only a few miles from Tarawera Mountain, which in
June, 1886, burst into eruption, and covered everything within
a radius of eight miles with a deep deposit of grey mud, and
scattered thin layers of mud and ashes to a much greater distance.
After the eruption, a very heavy rain fell and wore deep channels
in all directions through the mud. In consequence, round Waimangu
and the adjoining lake of Rotomahana you see the strangest, most
desolate scenery of grey gullies, by this time scantily sprinkled
with bracken and "toi-toi" grass, a tall, white-flowering grass
like pampas grass. Waimangu itself is principally a valley of
steam, sulphur, boiling mud, and little mud volcanoes. On the
ground are deposits of sulphur and alum, and you walk cautiously on
patches of hot, dry ground. Among the hot mud and through it all
runs a hot stream, with some variety of green algæ growing in it.
The hot stream flows into Rotomahana Lake, where once the famous
pink and white terraces were to be seen: they were destroyed by
the Tarawera eruption. Still the lake is sufficiently wonderful: a
lake of chalky blue water, actually boiling at one end and cold
at the other, lying in a crater, with the high, oblong-shaped mass
of Tarawera Mountain on one side. A great gap in the side of the
mountain is plainly visible, reminding all who see it of the hidden
forces ever at work.
On the other side of a low ridge, half a mile away, is Tarawera
Lake, several miles across--a lake of quite ordinary, clear, cold
water. The hills surrounding it are partly covered with bush, and
among the living trees still stand the skeletons of trees destroyed
by the eruption.
A few miles from Waimangu is another valley, and in it a succession
of primrose-coloured terraces, which are gradually being formed of
silica left by the overflow of a lake of boiling sulphur, and very
pretty they are. A lake of yellowish green water lies above several
long shallow steps of pale primrose silica; all around are clumps
of manuka and patches of brilliantly green mosses; and looking
across the terraces, you see mile beyond mile of level plain, all
a study in browns, with a dim blue ridge of hill on the distant
horizon.
Each of these wonder-spots has some special characteristic which
distinguishes it from the others. The valley of the primrose
terraces was one of sulphur--fringes of yellow sulphur floating
round the edges of hot green lakes and pools; sulphur surrounding
hot steam-holes; sulphur colouring the rocks and lying thickly upon
the ground. In another place, where, again I saw sulphur, alum
and hot springs, the chief wonder was the boiling mud: horrible,
deep pools of dark grey mud and petroleum, always working away and
heaving themselves up and down like the huge cauldrons of wicked
witches.
Fifty miles south of Rotorua is Weirakei. Here you see a marvellous
valley, which not only has excellent examples of all the strange
sights of this wonderland, but is also exceedingly pretty. It is a
narrow valley, on either side are high cliffs of grey rock streaked
with pink. At the bottom, among dainty ferns and bright green moss
and silvery lichen runs a brawling stream of clear, cold, blue
water. Beside the stream, and up the cliff sides, grow quantities
of manuka, with feathery green sprays; and other shrubs, with tiny
green leaves and small white berries: and on every hand, puffs of
steam rise and float away over the greenery.
This valley is specially noted for geysers, which play in absolute
regularity one after another in beautiful columns of glittering
water-drops, the columns varying in height from ten to forty feet.
One geyser shoots out from a truly awesome opening, in shape like
a dragon's mouth, formed in a mass of old-rose coloured silica,
and torrents of boiling water pour out of the mouth and down a
steep slope of more pink silica, and you stand on hot rock at the
bottom of the slope, watching the water come right up to your
feet. Below the geyser is another wonder--a small pool, deep blue
in colour, and from its depths some gas is continually rising to
the surface, like a flash of dazzling lightning. This is a valley
of many colours; the deposits of silica are of white, pink, or
emerald-green--there are mud-pools of cream or pink, where the
boiling mud rises up and falls over in shapes resembling roses or
lilies: and always the setting is of green, leafy sprays, emerald
mosses and luxuriant ferns.
Near Weirakei is another valley, where the stream which flows
through it is a boiling creek, fed by tiny tributary streams of
boiling water, all of chalky white. Half-way up this valley is
a wide waterfall of boiling water tumbling over salmon-coloured
cliffs; and all about, watered by the hot spray, grow lovely ferns
and feathery manuka. There are three little pools in a cluster, two
quite hot and one cold, their margins only a foot apart. You see
a large lake of hot blue water, and on its surface is a floating
scum like oily soapsuds. There are twin lakelets of brilliant blue.
Deep down in a hollow is a lake of deep rose-colour. Side by side
are lakelets, one of deep blue, the other of emerald green. You are
shown a large mud volcano. Near it is a deep hole of fathomless
black water. At the entrance of the valley is a big lake of hot
blue water, surrounded by high grey cliffs. Here and throughout
the thermal district, it is wise to follow the guide warily among
the scrub and on the hot rock, for outside the track are holes and
swamps; and if you once slip, you may get a scald from which you
will never recover.
Six miles beyond Weirakei is Taupo Lake, a great lake, twenty-five
miles long. On the right of it are dim grey hills; and opposite
them high cliffs of grey, streaked with pink and white. Beyond the
far end of the lake, on a clear day, are to be seen snow-covered
mountains, one of them a still active volcano, with smoke pouring
out from its snowy crater.
To the east of Rotorua, between that town and the Bay of Plenty, is
still volcanic country, but the strange sights grow gradually less
frequent. You see occasional puffs of steam among the bracken, and
are told of hot springs where refreshing baths may be taken, but it
is all a more normal country of lake, forest and swamp-land.
A coach road, principally composed of yellow sand--as stone is
scarce or almost unobtainable--runs from Rotorua to the Bay,
a distance of eighty miles, and a very good road it is in dry
weather. It runs past lakes surrounded by untouched bush, through
the heart of sombre forests, and up and down steep gorges, where
you see magnificent tree-ferns, "nikau" palms and many giant
trees. The North Island forest is different from that in the South
Island, though some of the trees are the same. There are still
rimus and other pines, but the feathery beeches of the south
are less frequent. The trees in the north are on the whole more
massive and gloomy: there are great "tawas" and honeysuckles, with
enormous trunks and dark glossy leaves; also many great ratas and
totaras. The supple-jack erects its slender black stems among the
tall trees, and the bush-lawyer drapes fuchsias and tree-ferns
with festoons of green; but it is all far less luxuriant than the
Westland bush. There are fewer ferns and mosses, often you see
patches of bare brown earth among bare tree-trunks, and, scattered
frequently through this northern forest, are the bleached branches
of dead or dying trees.
Some twenty miles from the sea, the hills, which in this part
of New Zealand run down to the coast in long parallel ridges,
stand back on either side, and the country opens out into a great
plain--eighty thousand acres of swamp-land. This will one day
be some of the most fertile land in the district. It is now
being drained by a steam dredge, which forces its way straight
through the swamp, leaving a wide dyke of dark brown water. At the
beginning of the swamp there is a wide river, to be crossed only
by a flat-bottomed punt, worked on a steel cable. The passengers
sit still and the horses are driven on to the boat, and the current
quickly pushes the boat to the opposite side.
Later, the road runs along the coast, and reaches an inlet from the
ocean of, perhaps, a mile wide. The water has to be crossed in a
little ferry boat, worked by oil and petrol. The horses are quite
used to it and go up the hanging gangway willingly enough; but
sometimes, when the sea is rough, it is not safe to venture, and
passengers must wait for several hours on an inhospitable, sandy
shore.
All this part of the country through which the coach runs, from
Rotorua to Opotiki, on the Bay of Plenty, is some of the most
isolated in New Zealand. Inland are scattered Maori settlements,
and tiny English townships by the coast. During the last few years
the land away back has been, to a great extent, taken up--forests
are being cut down and swamps drained--and in a few years' time,
the east coast will be one of the chief centres for sheep runs and
dairy farms.
On the Bay of Plenty, settlers tell you of cows and sheep, the
price of wool and the prospects of new cheese factories. In spite
of that you are still in "Uncanny Country," for there, forty miles
out to sea, is the cone of White Island, which was once an active
volcano. Its activities are now reduced to a large blowhole and a
lake of ever-boiling sulphur, from both of which by day and night
pour forth volumes of steam, and sometimes the north wind carries
the smell of sulphur to you across the bay.