FIRE AND WATER
A long time ago, that is to say, in the twilight of Maori tradition,
the chief Ngatoro and his wife, attended by a slave, landed on the
shores of the Bay of Plenty. Thence they wandered inland through
forests and over ferny downs, reaching at last a great central lake,
beyond which high mountains stood sentry in the very heart of the
island. One of these snow-clad summits they resolved to gain; but
half-way on the climb the slave fell ill of sheer cold. Then the chief
bethought him that in the Bay of Plenty he had noticed an island
steaming and smoking, boiling with heat. Hot coals brought thence
might warm the party and save the slave’s life. So Ngatoro, who was
magician as well as chieftain, looked eastward and made incantations;
and soon the fire rushing through the air fell at his feet. Another
more prosaic version of the tale says that, Maori fashion, the
kind-hearted hero despatched a messenger to bring the fire; he sent
his wife. She, traversing land and sea at full speed, was soon back
from White Island with a calabash full of glowing embers. From this,
as she hurried along, sparks dropped here and there on her track. And
wherever these fell the earth caught fire, hot springs bubbled up,
and steam-jets burst through the fern. All her haste, however, went
for nought; the slave died. Furious at his loss, her lord and master
flung the red embers down one of the craters of Mount Tongariro, and
from that day to this the mountains of Taupo have been filled with
volcanic fires, smouldering or breaking out in eruption.[1] Such is one
of the many legends which have grown up round the lakes and summits
of the most famous volcanic province of New Zealand. It indicates
the Maori understanding that the high cones south-west of Lake Taupo
are one end of a chain of volcanic forces, and that the other end is
White Island (Whaka-ari), the isolated crater which lifts its head
above the sea twenty-seven miles out in the wide Bay of Plenty. It is
a natural sulphur factory. Seen from the shores of the bay it looks
peaceful enough. Its only peculiarity seems to be a white cloud rising
high or streaming on the wind to leeward from the tip of its cone.
At a distance the cloud appears not unlike other white clouds; but
in the brightest weather it never vanishes away. I once spent three
sunny spring days in riding round the great arc of the Bay of Plenty,
often cantering for miles together along the sandy beach. There, out
to sea, lay White Island always in view and always flying its white
vapour-flag. In reality the quiet-looking islet seethes with fiery
life. Seen at close quarters it is found to be a shell, which from
one side looks comically like the well-worn stump of a hollow tooth.
It is a barren crater near a thousand feet high, enclosing what was a
lake and is now shrunk to a warm green pool, ringed with bright yellow
sulphur. Hot springs boil and roar on the crater-lake’s surface, ever
sending up columns of hissing and roaring steam many hundred feet
into the air. At times, as in 1886, the steam has shot to the almost
incredible height of fifteen thousand feet, a white pillar visible a
hundred miles away. You may thrust a stick through the floor of the
crater into the soft hot paste beneath. The walls of the abyss glow
with heat, steam-jets hiss from their fissures, and on the outside is a
thick crust of sulphur. The reek of the pit’s fumes easily outdoes that
of the blackest and most vicious of London fogs. “It is not that soft
smell of Roto-rua,” wrote Mr. Buddle, who smelt the place in 1906, “but
an odour of sulphurous acid which sticks in one’s throat.” Yet commerce
once tried to lay hands on White Island, and men were found willing to
try and work amid its noisome activities. Commerce, however, failed to
make Tartarus pay. Not far away from White Island lies Mayor Island,
which once upon a time must have been an even stranger spot. It also is
a high crater. On the rim of its yawning pit are to be seen the ruins
of a Maori stockade, which, perched in mid-air and approachable only
over the sea, must have been a hard nut for storming parties to crack
in the bygone days of tribal wars. All is quiet now; the volcano has
died out and the wars have become old tales.
[1] After writing this page I found that Mr. Percy Smith, formerly
Surveyor-General, gives another version of the legend. He tells how
the hero Ngatoro, landing on the shore of the Bay of Plenty, went
inland, and, with a companion named Ngauruhoe, climbed Tongariro. Near
the summit, Ngauruhoe died of cold, and Ngatoro, himself half-frozen,
shouted to his sisters far away in the legendary island of Hawaiki to
bring fire. His cry reached them far across the ocean, and they started
to his rescue. Whenever they halted--as at White Island--and lit their
camp fire, geysers spouted up from the ground. But when at length they
reached Tongariro, it was only to find that Ngatoro, tired of waiting
for them, had gone back to the coast.
A fourth version of the legend is contained in a paper by Mr. H. Hill
in vol. xxiv. of the _Transactions of the N.Z. Institute_.
Needless to say, the scenes between Ruapehu and the sea-coast are not
all as terrific as this. The main charm of the volcanic province is,
indeed, its variety. Though in a sense its inhabitants live on the lid
of a boiler--a boiler, too, that is perforated with steam holes--still
it is a lid between five thousand and six thousand square miles in
size. This leaves ample room for broad tracts where peace reigns amid
apparent solidity and security. Though it is commonly called the Hot
Lakes District, none of its larger lakes are really hot, that is to say
hot throughout; they are distinctly cold. Roto-mahana before it was
blown up in the eruption of 1886 was in no part less than lukewarm; but
in those days Roto-mahana only covered 185 acres. At Ohinemutu there
is a pool the water of which is unmistakably hot throughout; but it is
not more than about a hundred yards long. Usually the hot lagoons are
patchy in temperature--boiling at one end, cool at the other. Perhaps
the official title, Thermal Springs District, is more accurate. The
hot water comes in the form of springs, spouts, and geysers. Boiling
pools there are in numbers, veritable cauldrons. Boiling springs burst
up on the beaches of the cold lakes, or bubble up through the chilly
waters. The bather can lie floating, as the writer has, with his feet
in hot and his head in cold water. Very agreeable the sensation is as
the sunshine pours from a blue sky on to a lagoon fringed with ferns
and green foliage. There are places where the pedestrian fording a
river may feel his legs chilled to the marrow by the swift current, and
yet find the sandy bottom on which he is treading almost burn the soles
of his feet. The first white traveller to describe the thermal springs
noted a cold cascade falling on an orifice from which steam was puffing
at intervals. The resultant noise was as strange as the sight. So do
hot and cold mingle and come into conflict in the thermal territory.
[Illustration: “THE DRAGON’S MOUTH”]
The area of this hydro-thermal district, which Mr. Percy Smith, the
best living authority on the subject, calls the Taupo volcanic zone,
is roundly about six thousand square miles. As already said, part of
it lies under the sea, above which only White Island, Mayor Island,
and Whale Island rise to view. Its shape, if we could see the whole
of it, would probably be a narrow oval, like an old-fashioned silver
hand-mirror with a slender handle. In the handle two active volcanoes
lift their heads--Ruapehu, and Tongariro with its three cones. At
the other end of the mirror White Island stands up, incessantly at
work. This exhausts the list of active volcanoes; but there are six
or seven extinct or quiescent volcanoes of first-class importance.
Mayor Island, in the Bay of Plenty, is a dead crater rimmed by walls
five miles round and nearly 1300 feet high, enclosing a terrible chasm
lined with dark obsidian. Mount Edgecombe, an admirably regular cone,
easily seen from the coast, has two craters in its summit; and the
most appalling explosion ever known in the country occurred in the
tract covered by Mount Tarawera and the Roto-mahana Lake. How terrific
were the forces displayed by these extinct volcanoes in ages past
may be judged by the vast extent of country overlaid by the pumice
and volcanic clay belched forth from their craters. Not only is the
volcanic zone generally overspread with this, only sparse patches
escaping, but pumice is found outside its limits. Within these, it
is, loosely speaking, pumice, pumice everywhere, dry, gritty, and
useless,--a thin scattering of pumice on the hill-tops and steep
slopes,--deep strata of pumice where it has been washed down into
valleys and river terraces. Mingled with good soil it is mischievous,
though two or three grasses, notably that called Chewing’s fescue, grow
well in the mixture. Unmixed pumice is porous and barren. Fortunately
the tracts of deep pumice are limited. They soak up the ample rainfall;
grass grows, but soon withers; in dry weather a sharp tug will drag a
tussock from the roots in the loose, thirsty soil. The popular belief
is that it only needs a long-continued process of stamping and rolling
to make these pumice expanses hold water and become fertile. Those
who think thus point out that around certain lonely lagoons,
where wild horses and cattle have been wont to camp and roll, rich
green patches of grass are found. Less hopeful observers hold that the
destiny of the pumice country is probably to grow trees, fruit-bearing
and other, whose deep roots will reach far down to the water.
Already the Government, acting on this belief, has taken the work of
tree-planting in hand, and millions of young saplings are to be found
in the Waiotapu valley and elsewhere in the pumice land. Prison-labour
is used for the purpose; and though a camp of convicts, with movable
prison-vans like the cages of a travelling menagerie, seems a strange
foil to the wonders of Nature, the toil is healthy for the men as well
as useful to the country. From the vast extent of the pumice and clay
layers it would seem that, uneasy as the thermal territory now is, it
has, for all its geysers, steaming cones, and innumerable springs,
become but a fretful display of slowly dying forces. So say those who
look upon the great catastrophe of 1886 as merely the flicker of a
dying flame.
[Illustration: HUKA FALLS]
As already said, the volcanic zone is a land of lakes, many and
beautiful. Four of the most interesting--Roto-rua, Roto-iti, Roto-ehu,
and Roto-ma--lie in a chain, like pieces of silver loosely strung
together. South of these Tarawera sleeps in sight of its terrible
mountain, and south again of Tarawera the hot springs of Roto-mahana
still draw sight-seers, though its renowned terraces are no longer
there. Lake Okataina is near, resting amid unspoiled forest: and there
is Roto-kakahi, the green lake, and, hard by, Tikitapu, the blue lake,
beautiful by contrast. But, of course, among all the waters Taupo
easily overpeers the rest. “The Sea” the Maori call it; and indeed
it is so large, and its whole expanse so easily viewed at once from
many heights, that it may well be taken to be greater than it is. It
covers 242 square miles, but the first white travellers who saw it and
wrote about it guessed it to be between three and five hundred. Hold
a fair-sized map of the district with the eastern side uppermost and
you will note that the shape of Taupo is that of an ass’s head with
the ears laid back. This may seem an irreverent simile for the great
crater lake, with its deep waters and frowning cliffs, held so sacred
and mysterious by the Maori of old. Seldom is its surface flecked by
any sail, and only one island of any size breaks the wide expanse. The
glory of Taupo--apart from the noble view of the volcanoes southward
of it--is a long rampart of cliffs that almost without a break hems
in its western side mile after mile. At their highest they reach 1100
feet. So steep are they that in flood-time cascades will make a clean
leap from their summits into the lake; and the sheer descent of the
wall continues below the surface, for, within a boat’s length of the
overhanging cliff, sounding-leads have gone down 400 feet. Many are
the waterfalls which in the stormier months of the year seam the rocky
faces with white thread-like courses. On a finer scale than the others
are the falls called Mokau, which, dashing through a leafy cleft, pour
into the deep with a sounding plunge, and, even from a distance, look
something broader and stronger than the usual white riband.
By contrast, on the eastern side of the lake wide strips of beach are
not uncommon, and the banks, plains, and terrace sides of whitish
pumice, though not inconsiderable, are but tame when compared with
the dark basaltic and trachytic heights overhanging the deep western
waters. Many streams feed Taupo; only one river drains it. It is
not astonishing, then, that the Maori believed that in the centre a
terrible whirlpool circled round a great funnel down which water was
sucked into the bowels of the earth. A variant of this legend was
that a huge _taniwha_ or saurian monster haunted the western depths,
ready and willing to swallow canoes and canoemen together. The river
issuing from Taupo is the Waikato, which cuts through the rocky lip
of the crater-lake at its north-east corner. There it speeds away as
though rejoicing to escape, with a strong clear current about two
hundred yards wide. Then, pent suddenly between walls of hard rock,
it is jammed into a deep rift not more than seventy feet across.
Boiling and raging, the whole river shoots from the face of a steep
tree-clothed cliff with something of the force of a horizontal geyser.
Very beautiful is the blue and silver column as it falls, with outer
edges dissolving into spray, into the broad and almost quiet expanse
below. This waterfall, the Huka, though one of the famous sights
of the island, does not by any means exhaust the beauties of the
Upper Waikato. A little lower down the Ara-tia-tia Rapids furnish a
succession of spectacles almost as fine. There for hundreds of yards
the river, a writhing serpent of blue and milk-white flecked with
silver, tears and zig-zags, spins and foams, among the dripping reefs
and between high leafy rocks, “wild with the tumult of tumbling waters.”
Broadly speaking, the Taupo plateau is a region of long views. Cold
nights are more often than not followed by sunny days. The clear and
often brilliant air enables the eye to travel over the nearer plains
and hills to where some far-off mountain chain almost always closes
the prospect. The mountains are often forest-clad, the plains and
terraces usually open. Here will be seen sheets of stunted bracken;
there, wide expanses of yellowish tussock-grass. The white pumice and
reddish-brown volcanic clay help to give a character to the colouring
very different to the black earth and vivid green foliage of other
parts of the island. The smooth glacis-like sides of the terraces,
and the sharply-cut ridges of the hills, seem a fit setting for the
perpetual display of volcanic forces and an adjunct in impressing
on the traveller that he is in a land that has been fashioned on a
strange design. Nothing in England, and very little in Europe, remotely
resembles it. Only sometimes on the dusty tableland of Central Spain,
in Old or New Castile, may the New Zealander be reminded of the long
views and strong sunlight, or the shining slopes leading up to blue
mountain ranges cutting the sky with clean lines.
[Illustration: ARA-TIA-TIA RAPIDS]
Some of the finest landscape views in the central North Island are
to be seen from points of vantage on the broken plateau to the westward
of Ruapehu. On the one side the huge volcanic mass, a sloping rampart
many miles long, closes the scene; on the other, the land, falling
towards the coast, is first scantily clothed with coarse tussock-grass
and then with open park-like forest. The timber grows heavier towards
the coast, and in the river valleys where the curling Wanganui and the
lesser streams Waitotara and Patea run between richly-draped cliffs to
the sea. Far westward above the green expanse of foliage--soon to be
hewn by the axe and blackened by fire--the white triangle of Egmont’s
cone glimmers through faint haze against the pale horizon.
Between Taupo and the eastern branch of the Upper Wanganui ran a
foot-track much used by Maori travellers in days of yore. At one point
it wound beneath a steep hill on the side of which a projecting ledge
of rock formed a wide shallow cave. Beneath this convenient shelf it
is said that a gang of Maori highwaymen were once wont to lurk on the
watch for wayfarers, solitary or in small parties. At a signal they
sprang out upon these, clubbed them to death, and dragged their bodies
to the cave. There these cannibal bush-rangers gorged themselves on
the flesh of their victims. I tell the story on the authority of the
missionary Taylor, who says that he climbed to the cave, and standing
therein saw the ovens used for the horrid meals and the scattered bones
of the human victims. If he was not imposed upon, the story supplies a
curious exception to Maori customs. Their cannibalism was in the main
practised at the expense of enemies slain or captured in inter-tribal
wars; and they had distinct if peculiar prejudices in favour of fair
fighting. I have read somewhere that in the Drakensberg Mountains above
Natal a similar gang of cannibal robbers was once discovered--Kaffirs
who systematically lured lonely victims into a certain remote ravine,
where they disappeared.
One of the curiosities of the Taupo wilderness is the flat-topped
mountain Horo-Horo. Steep, wooded slopes lead up to an unbroken ring
of precipices encircling an almost level table-top. To the eyes of
riders or coach-passengers on the road between Taupo and Roto-rua, the
brows of the cliffs seem as inaccessible as the crown of Roraima in
British Guiana in the days before Mr. Im Thurn scaled it. The Maori own
Horo-Horo, and have villages and cultivations on the lower slopes where
there is soil fertile beyond what is common thereabout. Another strange
natural fortress not far away is Pohaturoa, a tusk of lava, protruding
some eight hundred feet hard by the course of the Waikato and in full
view of a favourite crossing-place. Local guides are, or used to be,
fond of comparing this eminence with Gibraltar, to which--except that
both are rocks--it bears no manner of likeness.
The Japanese, as we know, hold sacred their famous volcano Fusiyama.
In the same way the Maori in times past regarded Tongariro and
Ruapehu as holy ground. But, whereas the Japanese show reverence
to Fusi by making pilgrimages to its summit in tens of thousands,
the Maori veneration of their great cones took a precisely opposite
shape,--they would neither climb them themselves nor allow others to
do so. The earlier white travellers were not only refused permission
to mount to the summit, but were not even allowed to set foot on the
lower slopes. In 1845 the artist George French Angas could not even
obtain leave to make a sketch of Tongariro, though he managed to do
so by stealth. Six years earlier Bidwill eluded native vigilance
and actually reached the summit of one of the cones, probably that
of Ngauruhoe, but when, after peering down through the sulphurous
clouds of the inaccessible gulf, he made his way back to the shores
of Lake Taupo, the local chieftain gave him a very bad quarter of an
hour indeed. This personage, known in New Zealand story as Old Te Heu
Heu, was one of the most picturesque figures of his race. His great
height--“nearly seven feet,” says one traveller; “a complete giant,”
writes another--his fair complexion, almost classic features, and
great bodily strength are repeatedly alluded to by the whites who saw
him; not that whites had that privilege every day, for Te Heu Heu held
himself aloof among his own people, defied the white man, and refused
to sign the treaty of Waitangi or become a liegeman of the Queen. His
tribesmen had a proverb--“Taupo is the Sea; Tongariro is the Mountain;
Te Heu Heu is the Man.” This they would repeat with the air of men
owning a proprietary interest in the Atlantic Ocean, Kinchin Junga,
and Napoleon. He was indeed a great chief, and a perfect specimen of
the Maori _Rangatira_ or gentleman. He considered himself the special
guardian of the volcanoes. Like him they were _tapu_--“_tapu’d_ inches
thick,” as the author of _Old New Zealand_ would say. Indeed, when
his subjects journeyed by a certain road, from one turn of which they
could view the cone of Ngauruhoe, they were expected at the critical
spot to veil their eyes with their mats so as not to look on the holy
summit. At any rate, Bidwill declares that they told him so. Small
wonder, therefore, if this venturesome trespasser came in for a severe
browbeating from the offended Te Heu Heu, who marched up and down his
_wharé_ breaking out into passionate speech. Bidwill asserts that he
pacified the great man by so small a present as three figs of tobacco.
Of course, it is possible that in 1839 tobacco was more costly at Taupo
than in after years. The Maori version of the incident differs from
Bidwill’s.
In the uneasy year of 1845 Te Heu Heu marched down to the Wanganui
coast at the head of a strong war-party. The scared settlers were
thankful to find that he did not attack them. He was, indeed, after
other game, and was bent on squaring accounts with a local tribe which
had shed the blood of his people. Bishop Selwyn, who happened to be
then in the neighbourhood, saw and spoke with the highland chieftain,
urging peace. The interviews must have been worth watching. On the one
side stood the typical barbarian, eloquent, fearless, huge of limb,
with handsome face and maize-coloured complexion, and picturesque
in kilt, cloak, and head-feather. On the other side was a bishop in
hard training, a Christian gentleman, as fine as English culture
could furnish, whose clean-cut aquiline face and unyielding mouth had
the becoming support of a tall, vigorous frame lending dignity to
his clerical garb. Here was the heathen determined to save his tribe
from the white man’s grasping hands and dissolving religion; there
the missionary seeing in conversion and civilisation the only hope of
preserving the Maori race. Death took Te Heu Heu away before he had
time to see his policy fail. Fate was scarcely so kind to Selwyn, who
lived to see the Ten-Years’ War wreck most of his life’s work among the
natives.
As far as I know, Te Heu Heu never crossed weapons with white men,
though he allied himself with our enemies and gave shelter to
fugitives. His region was regarded as inaccessible in the days of good
Governor Grey. He was looked upon as a kind of Old Man of the Mountain,
and in Auckland they told you stories of his valour, hospitality,
choleric temper, and his six--or was it eight?--wives. So the old chief
stayed unmolested, and met his end with his _mana_ in no way abated. It
was a fitting end: the soil which he guarded so tenaciously overwhelmed
him. The steep hill-side over his village became loosened by heavy rain
and rotted by steam and sulphur-fumes. It began to crack and slip away.
According to one account, a great land-slip descending in the night
buried the _kainga_ and all in it save one man. Another story states
that the destruction came in the day-time, and that Te Heu Heu refused
to flee. He was said to have stood erect, confronting the avalanche,
with flashing eyes, and with his white hair blown by the wind. At any
rate, the soil of his ancestress the Earth (he claimed direct descent
from her) covered him, and for a while his body lay there. After some
time his tribe disinterred it, and laying it on a carved and ornamented
bier, bore it into the mountains with the purpose of casting it down
the burning crater of Tongariro. The intention was dramatic, but the
result was something of an anticlimax. When nearing their journey’s end
the bearers were startled by the roar of an eruption. They fled in a
panic, leaving the remains of their hero to lie on the steep side of
the cone on some spot never identified. There they were probably soon
hidden by volcanic dust, and so, “ashes to ashes,” slowly mingled with
the ancestral mass.[2]
[2] The accepted tradition of Te Heu Heu’s funeral is that given
above. After these pages went to the printer, however, I lighted upon
a newspaper article by Mr. Malcolm Ross, in which that gentleman
states that the bier and the body of the chief were not abandoned on
the mountain-side, but were hidden in a cave still known to certain
members of the tribe. The present Te Heu Heu, says Mr. Ross, talks of
disinterring his ancestor’s remains and burying them near the village
of Te Rapa.
[Illustration: LAKE TAUPO]
The chiefs of the Maori were often their own minstrels. To compose
a panegyric on a predecessor was for them a worthy task. Te Heu Heu
himself was no mean poet. His lament for one of his forefathers has
beauty, and, in Mr. James Cowan’s version, is well known to
New Zealand students. But as a poem it was fairly eclipsed by the
funeral ode to his own memory composed and recited by his brother and
successor. The translation of this characteristic Maori poem, which
appeared in Surgeon-Major Thomson’s book, has been out of print for so
many years that I may reproduce some portions of it here:--
See o’er the heights of dark Pauhara’s mount
The infant morning wakes. Perhaps my friend
Returns to me clothed in that lightsome cloud.
Alas! I toil alone in this lone world.
Yes, thou art gone!
Go, thou mighty! go, thou dignified!
Go, thou who wert a spreading tree to shade
Thy people all when evil hovered round!
Sleep on, O Chief, in that dark, damp abode!
And hold within thy grasp that weapon rare
Bequeathed by thy renownéd ancestor.
Turn yet this once thy bold athletic frame,
And let me see thy skin carved o’er with lines
Of blue; and let me see again thy face
Beautifully chiselled into varied forms!
Cease, cease thy slumbers, O thou son of Rangi!
Wake up! and take thy battle-axe, and tell
Thy people of the coming signs, and what
Will now befall them. How the foe, tumultuous
As are the waves, will rush with spears uplifted,
And how thy people will avenge their wrongs.
No, thou art fallen; and the earth receives
Thee as its prey! But yet thy wondrous fame
Shall soar on high, resounding o’er the heavens
Loosely speaking, New Zealand is a volcanic archipelago. There are hot
pools and a noted sanatorium in the Hanmer plains in the middle of the
Middle Island. There are warm springs far to the north of Auckland,
near Ohaeawai, where the Maori once gave our troops a beating in the
early days of our race-conflict with them. Auckland itself, the queen
of New Zealand towns, is almost a crater city. At any rate, it is
surrounded by dead craters. You are told that from a hill-top in the
suburbs you may count sixty-three volcanic cones. Two sister towns,
Wellington and Christchurch, have been repeatedly taken and well
shaken by Mother Earth. Old Wellington settlers will gravely remind
you that some sixty years ago a man, an inoffensive German baron,
lost his life in a shock there. True, he was not swallowed up or
crushed by falling ruins; a mirror fell from a wall on to his head.
This earthquake was followed in 1855 by another as sharp, and one of
the two so alarmed a number of pioneer settlers that they embarked
on shipboard to flee from so unquiet a land. Their ship, however, so
the story runs, went ashore near the mouth of Wellington harbour, and
they returned to remain, and, in some cases, make their fortunes. In
1888 a double shock of earthquake wrecked some feet of the cathedral
spire at Christchurch, nipping off the point of it and the gilded iron
cross which it sustained, so that it stood for many months looking
like a broken lead-pencil. A dozen years later, Cheviot, Amuri, and
Waiau were sharply shaken by an earthquake that showed scant mercy
to brick chimneys and houses of the material known as cob-and-clay.
Finally, in the little Kermadec islets, far to the north of Cape
Maria Van Diemen, we encounter hot pools and submarine explosions,
and passing seamen have noted there sheets of ejected pumice floating
and forming a scum on the surface of the ocean. As might be supposed,
guides and hangers-on about Roto-rua and Taupo revel in tales of
hairbreadth escapes and hair-raising fatalities. Nine generations ago,
say the Maori, a sudden explosion of a geyser scalded to death half
the villagers of Ohinemutu. In the way of smaller mishaps you are told
how, as two Maori children walked together by Roto-mahana one slipped
and broke through the crust of silica into the scalding mud beneath.
The other, trying to lift him out, was himself dragged in and both were
boiled alive. Near Ohinemutu, three revellers, overfull of confidence
and bad rum, stepped off a narrow track at night and perished together
in sulphurous mud and scalding steam. At the extremity of Boiling Point
a village, or part of a village, is said to have been suddenly engulfed
in the waters of Roto-rua. At the southern end of Taupo there is, or
was, a legend current that a large _wharé_ filled with dancers met,
in a moment, a similar fate. In one case of which I heard, that of a
Maori woman, who fell into a pool of a temperature above boiling-point,
a witness assured me that she did not appear to suffer pain long: the
nervous system was killed by the shock. Near Roto-rua a bather with
a weak heart was picked up dead. He had heedlessly plunged into a
pool the fumes and chemical action of which are too strong for a weak
man. And a certain young English tourist sitting in the pool nicknamed
Painkiller was half-poisoned by mephitic vapour, and only saved by the
quickness of a Maori guide. That was a generation ago: nowadays the
traveller need run no risks. Guides and good medical advice are to be
had by all who will use them. No sensible person need incur any danger
whatever.
Among stories of the boiling pools the most pathetic I can recall is of
a collie dog. His master, a shepherd of the Taupo plateau, stood one
day on the banks of a certain cauldron idly watching the white steam
curling over the bubbling surface. His well-loved dog lay stretched on
the mud crust beside him. In a thoughtless moment the shepherd flung a
stick into the clear blue pool. In a flash the dog had sprung after it
into the water of death. Maddened by the poor creature’s yell of pain,
his master rushed to the brink, mechanically tearing off his coat as he
ran. In another instant he too would have flung himself to destruction.
Fortunately an athletic Maori who was standing by caught the poor man
round the knees, threw him on to his back and held him down till all
was over with the dog.
[Illustration: IN A HOT POOL]
Near a well-known lake and in a _wharé_ so surrounded by boiling mud,
scalding steam, hot water, and burning sulphur as to be difficult of
approach, there lived many years ago two friends. One was a teetotaller
and a deeply religious man--characteristics not universal in the Hot
Lakes district at that precise epoch. The other inhabitant was
more nearly normal in tastes and beliefs. The serious-minded friend
became noted for having--unpaid, and with his own hands--built a chapel
in the wilderness. Yet, unhappily, returning home on a thick rainy
evening he slipped and fell into a boiling pool, where next day he was
found--dead, of course. In vain the oldest inhabitants of the district
sought to warn the survivor. He declined to be terrified, or to change
either his dangerous abode or his path thereto. He persisted in walking
home late at night whenever it suited him to do so. The “old hands” of
the district shook their heads and prophesied that there could be but
one end to such recklessness. And, sure enough, on a stormy night the
genial and defiant Johnnie slipped in his turn and fell headlong into
the pool which had boiled his mate. One wild shout he gave, and men
who were within earshot tore to the spot--“Poor old Johnnie! Gone at
last! We always said he would!” Out of the darkness and steam, however,
they were greeted with a sound of vigorous splashing and of expressions
couched in strong vernacular.
“Why, Johnnie man, aren’t you dead? Aren’t you boiled to death?”
“Not I! There’s no water in this ---- country hot enough to boil me.
Help me out!”
It appeared that the torrents of rain which had been falling had
flooded a cold stream hard by, and this, overflowing into the pool, had
made it pleasantly tepid.
[Illustration: NGONGOTAHA MOUNTAIN]
Needless to say, there is one fatal event, the story of which
overshadows all other stories told of the thermal zone. It is the one
convulsion of Nature there, since the settlement of New Zealand, that
has been great enough to become tragically famous throughout the world,
apart from its interest to science. The eruption of Mount Tarawera was
a magnificent and terrible spectacle. Accompanied as it was by the
blowing-up of Lake Roto-mahana, it destroyed utterly the beautiful
and extraordinary Pink and White Terraces. There can be no doubt that
most of those who saw them thought the lost Pink and White Terraces
the finest sight in the thermal region. They had not the grandeur of
the volcanoes and the lakes, or the glorious energy of the geysers;
but they were an astonishing combination of beauty of form and colour,
of what looked like rocky massiveness with the life and heat of water
in motion. Then there was nothing else of their kind on the earth at
all equal to them in scale and completeness. So they could fairly be
called unique, and the gazer felt on beholding them that in a sense
this was the vision of a lifetime. Could those who saw them have known
that the spectacle was to be so transient, this feeling must have been
much keener. For how many ages they existed in the ferny wilderness,
seen only by a few savages, geologists may guess at. Only for about
twelve years were they the resort of any large number of civilised
men. It is strange how little their fame had gone abroad before
Hochstetter described them after seeing them in 1859. Bidwill, who was
twice at Roto-rua in 1839, never mentions them. The naturalist
Dieffenbach, who saw them in 1842, dismisses them in a paragraph,
laudatory but short. George French Angas, the artist, who was the
guest of Te Heu Heu in 1845, and managed, against express orders, to
sketch Tongariro, does not seem to have heard of them. Yet he of all
men might have been expected to get wind of such a marvel. For a marvel
they were, and short as was the space during which they were known to
the world, their fame must last until the Fish of Maui is engulfed in
the ocean. There, amid the green manuka and rusty-green bracken, on
two hill-sides sloping down to a lake of moderate size--Roto-mahana or
Warm Lake,--strong boiling springs gushed out. They rose from two broad
platforms, each about a hundred yards square, the flooring of craters
with reddish-brown sides streaked and patched with sulphur. Their
hot water, after seething and swirling in two deep pools, descended
to the lake over a series of ledges, basins, or hollowed terraces,
which curved out as boldly as the swelling canvas of a ship, so that
the balustrades or battlements--call them what you will--seemed the
segments of broken circles. Their irregular height varied from two to
six feet, and visitors could scale them, as in Egypt they climb the
pyramids. One terrace, or rather set of terraces, was called White,
the other Pink: but the White were tinged lightly with pink in spots,
and their rosy sisters paled here and there, so as to become nearly
colourless in places. “White,” moreover, scarcely conveys the exact
impression of Te Tarata, except from a distance or under strong light.
Domett’s “cataract of marble” summed it up finely. But to be precise,
where it was smoothest and where water and the play of light made
the surface gleam or glisten, the silica coating of the White ledges
reminded you rather of old ivory, or polished bone tinted a faint
yellow. As for the “Pink” staircase, one traveller would describe it as
bright salmon-pink, another as pale rose, for eyes in different heads
see the same things differently. The White Terrace was the higher of
the two, and descended with a gentler slope than the other. The skirts
of both spread out into the lake, so that its waters flowed over them.
The number and fine succession of these ivory arcs and rosy battlements
made but half their charm. The hot water as it trickled from shelf to
shelf left its flinty sediment in delicate incrustations--here like the
folds of a mantle, there resembling fringing lace-work, milk outpoured
and frozen, trailing parasites or wild arabesques. Or it made you think
of wreathed sea-foam, snow half-melted, or the coral of South Sea
reefs. Then among it lay the blue pools, pool after pool, warm, richly
coloured, glowing; while over every edge and step fell the water,
trickling, spurting, sparkling, and steaming as it slowly cooled on its
downward way. So that, though there was a haunting reminder of human
architecture and sculpture, there was none of the smug finish of man’s
buildings, nothing of the cold dead lifelessness of carved stone-work.
The sun shone upon it, the wind played with the water-drops. The blue
sky--pale by contrast--overarched the deeper blue of the pools. Green
mosses and vivid ferns grew and flourished on the very edge of the
steam. What sculptor’s frieze or artist’s structure ever had such a
framework? In the genial water the bathers, choosing their temperature,
could float or sit, breathing unconfined air and wondering at the
softness and strange intensity of colour. They could bathe in the
day-time when all was sunshine, or on summer nights when the moonlight
turned the ledges to alabaster. Did the tribute of his provinces build
for Caracalla such imperial baths as these? No wonder that Nature,
after showing such loveliness to our age for a moment, snatched it away
from the desecration of scribbling, defacing, civilised men!
The eruption of Tarawera was preceded by many signs of disturbance.
Science in chronicling them seems to turn gossip and collect portents
with the gusto of Plutarch or Froissart. The calamity came on the 10th
of June, and therefore in early winter. The weather had been stormy
but had cleared, so no warning could be extracted from its behaviour.
But, six months before, the cauldron on the uppermost platform of Te
Tarata had broken out in strange fashion. Again and again the water
had shrunk far down, and had even been sucked in to the supplying
pipe, leaving the boiling pit, thirty yards across and as many feet
deep, quite dry. Then suddenly the water had boiled up and a geyser, a
mounting column or dome many feet in thickness, had shot up into the
air, struggling aloft to the height of a hundred and fifty feet. From
it there went up a pillar of steam four or five times as high, with a
sound heard far and wide. Geyser-like as the action of the terrace-pool
had been, nothing on this scale had been recorded before. Then from the
Bay of Plenty came the news that thousands of dead fish had been cast
up on the beaches, poisoned by the fumes of some submarine explosion.
Furthermore, the crater-lake in White Island suddenly went dry--another
novelty. Next, keen-eyed observers saw steam issuing from the top of
Ruapehu. They could scarcely believe their eyes, for Ruapehu had been
quiescent as far back as man’s memory went. But there was no doubt of
it. Two athletic surveyors clambered up through the snows, and there,
as they looked down four hundred feet on the crater-lake from the
precipices that ringed it in, they saw the surface of the water lifted
and shaken, and steam rising into the icy air. Later on, just before
the catastrophe, the Maori by Roto-mahana lost their chief by sickness.
As he lay dying some of his tribe saw a strange canoe, paddled by
phantom warriors, glide across the lake and disappear. The number of
men in the canoe was thirteen, and as they flitted by their shape
changed and they became spirits with dogs’ heads. The tribe, struck
with terror, gave up hope for their chief. He died, and his body lay
not yet buried when the fatal night came. Lastly, on the day before
the eruption, without apparent cause, waves rose and swept across
the calm surface of Lake Tarawera, to the alarm of the last party of
tourists who visited the Terrace. Dr. Ralph, one of these, noted also
that soft mud had apparently just been ejected from the boiler of the
Pink Terrace, and lay strewn about twenty-five yards away. He and his
friends hastened away, depressed and uneasy.
No one, however, Maori or white, seriously conceived of anything like
the destruction that was impending. The landlord of the Wairoa hotel
grumbled at the native guide Sophia for telling of these ominous
incidents. And a Maori chief, with some followers, went to camp upon
two little islets in Roto-mahana lying handy for the hot bathing-pools.
Why should any one expect that the flat-topped, heavy looking mountain
of Tarawera would burst out like Krakatoa? True, Tarawera means
“burning peak,” but the hill, and its companion Ruawahia, must have
been quiescent for many hundred years. For were not trees growing in
clefts near the summits with trunks as thick as the height of a tall
man? Nor was there any tradition of explosions on the spot. Thirteen
generations ago, said the Maori, a famous chief had been interred
in or near one of the craters, and Nature had never disturbed his
resting-place. The surprise, therefore, was almost complete, and only
the winter season was responsible for the small number of tourists in
the district on the 10th of June. It was about an hour past midnight
when the convulsion began. First came slight shocks of earthquake;
then noises, booming, muttering, and swelling to a roar. The shocks
became sharper. Some of them seemed like strokes of a gigantic hammer
striking upwards. Then, after a shock felt for fifty miles round,
an enormous cloud rose above Tarawera and the mountain spouted fire,
stones, and dust to the heavens. The burning crater illumined the
cloud, so that it glowed like a “pillar of fire by night.” And above
the glow an immense black canopy began to open out and spread for at
least sixty miles, east, north-east and south-east. Seen from far
off it had the shape of a monstrous mushroom. In the earlier hours
of the eruption the outer edges of the mushroom shape were lit up by
vivid streams and flashes of lightning, shooting upward, downward, or
stabbing the dark mass with fierce sidelong thrusts. Forked bolts sped
in fiery zig-zags, or ascended, rocket-fashion, to burst and fall in
flaming fragments. Sounds followed them like the crackling of musketry.
Brilliantly coloured, the flashes were blue, golden or orange, while
some were burning bars of white that stood out, hot and distinct,
across the red of the vomiting crater. But more appalling even than the
cloudy canopy with its choking dust, the tempest, the rocking earth,
or the glare of lightning, was the noise. After two o’clock it became
an awful and unceasing roar, deafening the ears, benumbing the nerves,
and bewildering the senses of the unhappy beings within the ring of
death or imminent danger. It made the windows rattle in the streets
of Auckland one hundred and fifty miles away, and awoke many sleepers
in Nelson at a more incredible distance. And with the swelling of the
roar thick darkness settled down--darkness that covered half a province
for hours. Seven hours after the destruction began, settlers far away
on the sea-coast to the east were eating their morning meals--if they
cared to eat at all--by candle-light. To say that it was a darkness
that could be felt would be to belittle its horrors absurdly--at any
rate near Tarawera. For miles out from the mountain it was a darkness
that smote and killed you--made up as it was of mud and fire, burning
stones, and suffocating dust. Whence came the mud? Partly, no doubt, it
was formed by steam acting on the volcanic dust-cloud; but, in part,
it was the scattered contents of Roto-mahana--a whole lake hurled
skyward, water and ooze together. With Roto-mahana went its shores,
the Terraces, several neighbouring smaller lakes and many springs. Yet
so tremendous was the outburst that even this wreck was not physically
the chief feature of the destruction. That was the great rift, an
irregular cleft, fourteen or fifteen miles long, opened across the
Tarawera and its companion heights. This earth-crack, or succession of
cracks, varied in depth from three hundred to nine hundred feet. To any
one looking down into it from one of the hill-tops commanding it, it
seemed half as deep again. It, and the surrounding black scoria cast up
from its depths, soon became cold and dead; but, continuing as it did
to bear the marks of the infernal fires that had filled it, the great
fissure remained in after years the plainest evidence of that dark
night’s work. When I had a sight of it in 1891, it was the centre of
a landscape still clothed with desolation. The effect was dreary and
unnatural. The deep wound looked an injury to the earth as malign as
it was gigantic. It was precisely such a scene as would have suggested
to a zealot of the Middle Ages a vision of the pit of damnation.
[Illustration: LAKE AND MOUNT TARAWERA]
Until six in the morning the eruption did not slacken at all. Hot
stones and fireballs were carried for miles, and as they fell set huts
and forests on fire. Along with their devastation came a rain of mud,
loading the roofs of habitations and breaking down the branches of
trees. Blasts of hot air were felt, but usually the wind--and it blew
violently--was bitter cold. At one moment a kind of cyclone or tornado
rushed over Lake Tikitapu, prostrating and splintering, as it passed,
the trees close by, and so wrecking a forest famous for its beauty.[3]
What went on at the centre of the eruption no eye ever saw--the great
cloud hid it. The dust shot aloft is variously computed to have risen
six or eight miles. The dust-cloud did not strike down the living as
did the rain of mud, fire, and stones. But its mischief extended over a
much wider area. Half a day’s journey out from the crater it deposited
a layer three inches thick, and it coated even islands miles off the
east coast. By the sea-shore one observer thought the sound of its
falling was like a gentle rain. But the effect of the black sand and
mouse-coloured dust was the opposite of that of rain; for it killed
the pasture, and the settlers could only save their cattle and sheep
by driving them hastily off. Insect life was half destroyed, and many
of the smaller birds shared the fate of the insects. By Lake Roto-iti,
fourteen miles to the north of the crater, Major Mair, listening
to the dropping of the sand and dust, compared it to a soft ooze like
falling snow. It turned the waters of the lake to a sort of soapy grey,
and overspread the surrounding hills with an unbroken grey sheet.
The small bull-trout and crayfish of the lake floated dead on the
surface of the water. After a while birds starved or disappeared. Wild
pheasants came to the school-house seeking for chance crumbs of food,
and hungry rats were seen roaming about on the smooth carpet of dust.
[3] See _The Eruption of Tarawera_, by S. Percy Smith.
[Illustration: MAORI WASHING-DAY, OHINEMUTU]
How did the human inhabitants of the district fare at Roto-rua and
Ohinemutu? Close at hand as they were, no damage was done to life
or limb. They were outside the range of the destroying messengers.
But nearer to the volcano, in and about Roto-mahana, utter ruin was
wrought, and here unfortunately the natives of the Ngati Rangitihi,
living at Wairoa and on some other spots, could not escape. Some of
them, indeed, were encamped at the time on islets in Roto-mahana
itself, and they of course were instantly annihilated in the midst
of the convulsion. Their fellow tribesmen at Wairoa went through a
more lingering ordeal, to meet, nearly all of them, the same death.
About an hour after midnight Mr. Hazard, the Government teacher of the
native school at Wairoa, was with his family roused by the earthquake
shocks. Looking out into the night they saw the flaming cloud go up
from Tarawera, ten miles away. As they watched the spectacle, half in
admiration, half in terror, the father said to his daughter, “If we
were to live a hundred years, we should not see such a sight again.”
He himself did not live three hours, for he died, crushed by the ruin
of his house as it broke down under falling mud and stones. The wreck
of the building was set alight by a shower of fireballs, yet the
schoolmaster’s wife, who was pinned under it by a beam, was dug out
next day and lived. Two daughters survived with her; three children
perished. Other Europeans in Wairoa took refuge in a hotel, where for
hours they stayed, praying and wondering how soon the downpour of
fire, hot stones, mud and dust would break in upon them. In the end
all escaped save one English tourist named Bainbridge. The Maori in
their frail thatched huts were less fortunate; they made little effort
to save themselves, and nearly the whole tribe was blotted out. One
of them, the aged wizard Tukoto, is said to have been dug out alive
after four days: but his hair and beard were matted with the volcanic
stuff that had been rained upon him. The rescuers cut away the hair,
and Tukoto’s strength thereupon departed like Samson’s. At any rate
the old fellow gave up the ghost. In after days he became the chief
figure in a Maori legend, which now accounts for the eruption. It
seems that a short while before it, the wife of a neighbouring chief
had denounced Tukoto for causing the death of her child. Angry at an
unjust charge, the old wizard prayed aloud to the god of earthquakes,
and to the spirit of Ngatoro, the magician who kindled Tongariro, to
send down death upon the chief’s wife and her people. In due
course destruction came, but the gods did not nicely discriminate, so
Tukoto and those round him were overwhelmed along with his enemies.
At another native village not far away the Maori were more fortunate.
They had living among them Sophia the guide, whose _wharé_ was larger
and more strongly built than the common run of their huts. Sophia, too,
was a fine woman, a half-caste, who had inherited calculating power and
presence of mind from her Scotch father. Under her roof half a hundred
scared neighbours came crowding, trusting that the strong supporting
poles would prevent the rain of death from battering it down. When it
showed signs of giving way, Sophia, who kept cool, set the refugees
to work to shore it up with any props that could be found; and in the
end the plucky old woman could boast that no one of those who sought
shelter with her lost their lives.
* * * * *
The township of Roto-rua, with its side-shows Ohinemutu and
Whaka-rewa-rewa, escaped in the great eruption scot free, or at any
rate with a light powdering of dust. The place survived to become the
social centre of the thermal country, and now offers no suggestion
of ruin or devastation. It has been taken in hand by the Government,
and is bright, pleasant, and, if anything, too thoroughly comfortable
and modern. It is scientifically drained and lighted with electric
light. Hotels and tidy lodging-houses look out upon avenues planted
with exotic trees. The public gardens cover a peninsula jutting out
into the lake, and their flowery winding paths lead to lawns and
tennis-courts. Tea is served there by Maori waitresses whose caps and
white aprons might befit Kensington Gardens; and a band plays. If the
visitors to Roto-rua do not exactly “dance on the slopes of a volcano,”
at least they chat and listen to music within sight of the vapour of
fumaroles and the steam of hot springs. A steam launch will carry them
from one lake to another, or coaches convey them to watch geysers
made to spout for their diversion. They may picnic and eat sandwiches
in spots where they can listen to muddy cauldrons of what looks like
boiling porridge, sucking and gurgling in disagreeable fashion. Or they
may watch gouts of dun-coloured mud fitfully issuing from cones like
ant-hills--mud volcanoes, to wit.
For the country around is not dead or even sleeping, and within a
circuit of ten miles from Roto-rua there is enough to be seen to
interest an intelligent sight-seer for many days. Personally I do not
think Roto-rua the finest spot in the thermal region. Taupo, with its
lake, river, and great volcanoes, has, to my mind, higher claims. Much
as Roto-rua has to show, I suspect that the Waiotapu valley offers a
still better field to the man of science. However, the die has been
cast, and Roto-rua, as the terminus of the railway and the seat of the
Government sanatorium, has become a kind of thermal capital. There is
no need to complain of this. Its attractions are many, and, when they
are exhausted, you can go thence to any other point of the region. You
may drive to Taupo by one coach-road and return by another, or may
easily reach Waiotapu in a forenoon. Anglers start out from Roto-rua to
fish in a lake and rivers where trout are more than usually abundant.
You can believe if you like that the chief difficulty met with by
Roto-rua fishermen is the labour of carrying home their enormous
catches. But it is, I understand, true that the weight of trout caught
by fly or minnow in a season exceeds forty tons. At any rate--to drop
the style of auctioneers’ advertisements--the trout, chiefly of the
rainbow kind, are very plentiful, and the sport very good. I would say
no harder thing of the attractions of Roto-rua and its circuit than
this,--those who have spent a week there must not imagine that they
have seen the thermal region. They have not even “done” it, still less
do they know it. Almost every part of it has much to interest, and
Roto-rua is the beginning, not the end of it all. I know an energetic
colonist who, when travelling through Italy, devoted one whole day to
seeing Rome. Even he, however, agrees with me that a month is all too
short a time for the New Zealand volcanic zone. Sociable or elderly
tourists have a right to make themselves snug at Roto-rua or Wairakei.
But there are other kinds of travellers; and holiday-makers and lovers
of scenery, students of science, sportsmen, and workers seeking for
the space and fresh air of the wilderness, will do well to go farther
afield.
At Roto-rua, as at other spots in the zone, you are in a realm of
sulphur. It is in the air as well as the water, tickles your throat,
and blackens the silver in your pocket. Amongst many compensating
returns it brightens patches of the landscape with brilliant streaks
of many hues--not yellow or golden only, but orange, green, blue,
blood-red, and even purple. Often where the volcanic mud would be most
dismal the sulphur colours and glorifies it. Alum is found frequently
alongside it, whitening banks and pool in a way that makes Englishmen
think of their chalk downs. One mountain, Maunga Kakaramea (Mount
Striped-Earth), has slopes that suggest an immense Scottish plaid.
[Illustration: WAIROA GEYSER]
But more beautiful than the sulphur stripes or the coloured pools,
and startling and uncommon in a way that neither lakes nor mountains
can be, are the geysers. Since the Pink and White Terraces were blown
up, they are, perhaps, the most striking and uncommon feature of the
region, which, if it had nothing else to display, would still be well
worth a visit. They rival those of the Yellowstone and surpass those
of Iceland. New Zealanders have made a study of geysers, and know that
they are a capricious race. They burst into sudden activity, and as
unexpectedly go to sleep again. The steam-jet of Orakei-Korako, which
shot out of the bank of the Waikato at such an odd angle and astonished
all beholders for a few years, died down inexplicably. So did the
wonderful Waimangu, which threw a column of mud, stones, steam, and
boiling water at least 1500 feet into mid-air. The Waikité Geyser,
after a long rest, began to play again at the time of the Tarawera
eruption. That was natural enough. But why did it suddenly cease to
move after the opening of the railway to Roto-rua, two miles away? Mr.
Ruskin might have sympathised with it for so resenting the intrusion of
commercialism; but tourists did not. Great was the rejoicing when, in
1907, Waikité awoke after a sleep of thirteen years. Curiously enough,
another geyser, Pohutu, seems likewise attentive to public events, for
on the day upon which the Colony became a Dominion it spouted for no
less than fourteen hours, fairly eclipsing the numerous outpourings of
oratory from human rivals which graced the occasion. There are geysers
enough and to spare in the volcanic zone, to say nothing of the chances
of a new performer gushing out at any moment. Some are large enough to
be terrific, others small enough to be playful or even amusing. The
hydrodynamics of Nature are well understood at Roto-rua, where Mr.
Malfroy’s ingenious toy, the artificial geyser, is an exact imitation
of their structure and action. The curious may examine this, or they
may visit the extinct geyser, Te Waro, down the empty pipe of which
a man may be lowered. At fifteen feet below the surface he will find
himself in a vaulted chamber twice as roomy as a ship’s cabin and paved
and plastered with silica. From the floor another pipe leads to lower
subterranean depths. In the days of Te Waro’s activity steam rushing
up into this cavern from below would from time to time force the
water there violently upward: so the geyser played. To-day there are
geysers irritable enough to be set in motion by slices of soap, just
as there are solfataras which a lighted match can make to roar, and
excitable pools which a handful of earth will stir into effervescence.
More impressive are the geysers which spout often, but whose precise
time for showing energy cannot be counted on--which are, in fact, the
unexpected which is always happening. Very beautiful are the larger
geysers, as, after their first roaring outburst and ascent, they stand,
apparently climbing up, their effort to overcome the force of gravity
seeming to grow greater and greater as they climb. Every part of the
huge column seems to be alive; and, indeed, all is in motion within
it. Innumerable little fountains gush up on its sides, to curl back
and fall earthwards. The sunlight penetrates the mass of water, foam,
and steam, catching the crystal drops and painting rainbows which
quiver and dance in the wind. Bravely the column holds up, till, its
strength spent, it falters and sways, and at last falls or sinks slowly
down, subsiding into a seething whirlpool. Brief, as a rule, is the
spectacle, but while the fountain is striving to mount skyward it is
“all a wonder and a wild desire.”
[Illustration: COOKING IN A HOT SPRING]
Two Maori villages, one at Ohinemutu, the other at Whaka-rewa-rewa, are
disordered collections of irregular huts. Among them the brown natives
of the thermal district live and move with a gravity and dignity
that even their half-gaudy, half-dingy European garb cannot wholly
spoil. Passing their lives as they do on the edge of the cold lake,
and surrounded by hot pools and steam-jets, they seem a more or less
amphibious race, quite untroubled by anxiety about subterranean
action. They make all the use they can of Nature’s forces, employing
the steam and hot water for various daily wants. Of course they bathe
incessantly and wash clothes in the pools. They will sit up to their
necks in the warm fluid, and smoke luxuriously in a bath that does
not turn cold. But more interesting to watch is their cooking. Here
the steam of the blow-holes is their servant; or they will lay their
food in baskets of flax in some clean boiling spring, choosing, of
course, water that is tasteless. Cooking food by steam was and still is
the favourite method of the Maori. Where Nature does not provide the
steam, they dig ovens in the earth called _hangi_, and, wrapping their
food in leaves, place it therein on red-hot stones. Then they spread
more leaves over them, pour water upon these, and cover the hole with
earth. When the oven is opened the food is found thoroughly cooked,
and in this respect much more palatable than some of the cookery of
the colonists. In their culinary work the Maoris have always been neat
and clean. This makes their passion for those two terrible delicacies,
putrid maize and dried shark, something of a puzzle.
Life at Roto-rua is not all sight-seeing; there is a serious side to
it. Invalids resort thither, as they do to Taupo, in ever-increasing
numbers. The State sanatorium, with its brand-new bath-house, is as
well equipped now as good medical bathing-places are in Europe, and is
directed by a physician who was in former years a doctor of repute at
Bath. Amid the _embarras des richesses_ offered by the thermal springs
of the zone, Roto-rua has been selected as his headquarters, because
there two chief and distinct kinds of hot healing waters are found in
close neighbourhood, and can be used in the same establishment. The two
are acid-sulphur and alkaline-sulphur, and both are heavily loaded with
silica. Unlike European springs they gush out at boiling-point, and
their potency is undoubted. Sufferers tormented with gout or crippled
with rheumatism seek the acid waters; the alkaline act as a nervous
sedative and cure various skin diseases. There are swimming baths for
holiday-makers who have nothing the matter with them, and massage and
the douche for the serious patients. Persons without money are cared
for by the servants of the Government. Wonderful cures are reported,
and as the fame of the healing waters becomes better and better
established the number of successful cases steadily increases. For
the curable come confidently expecting to be benefited, and this, of
course, is no small factor in the efficacy of the baths, indisputable
as their strength is. Apart, too, from its springs, Roto-rua is a
sunny place, a thousand feet above the sea. The air is light even in
midsummer, and the drainage through the porous pumice and silica is
complete. In such a climate, amid such healing influences and such
varied and interesting surroundings, the sufferer who cannot gain
health at Roto-rua must be in a bad way indeed.
[Illustration: THE CHAMPAGNE CAULDRON]
In the middle of Roto-rua Lake, a green hill in the broad blue
surface, rises the isle of Mokoia. There is nothing extraordinary in
the way of beauty there. Still, it is high and shapely, with enough
foliage to feather the rocks and soften the outlines. Botanists
know it as one of the few spots away from the sea-beach where the
crimson-flowering pohutu-kawa has deigned to grow. In any case, the
scene of the legend of Hinemoa is sure of a warm corner in all New
Zealand hearts. The story of the chief’s daughter, and her swim by
night across the lake to join her lover on the island, has about it
that quality of grace with which most Maori tales are but scantily
draped. How many versions of it are to be found in print I do not dare
to guess, and shall not venture to add another to their number. For
two of New Zealand’s Prime Ministers have told the story well, and I
can refer my readers to the prose of Grey and the verse of Domett.
Only do I wish that I had heard Maning, the Pakeha Maori, repeat the
tale, standing on the shore of Mokoia, as he repeated it there to Dr.
Moore. In passing I may, however, do homage to one of the few bits
of sweet romance to be found in New Zealand literature. Long may my
countrymen steadfastly refuse to disbelieve a word of it! For myself,
as one who has bathed in Hinemoa’s bath, I hold by every sentence of
the tradition, and am fully persuaded that Hinemoa’s love-sick heart
was soothed, as she sat on her flat-topped rock on the mainshore, by
the soft music of the native trumpet blown by her hero on the island.
After all, the intervening water was some miles broad, and even that
terrific instrument, a native trumpet, might be softened by such a
distance.
Long after the happy union of its lovers, Mokoia saw another sight when
Hongi, “eater of men,” marched down with his Ngapuhi musketeers from
the north to exterminate the Arawa of the lake country. To the Roto-rua
people Mokoia had in times past been a sure refuge. In camp there, they
commanded the lake with their canoes; no invader could reach them,
for no invader could bring a fleet overland. So it had always been,
and the Mokoians trusting thereto, paddled about the lake defying and
insulting Hongi and his men in their camp on the farther shore. Yet
so sure of victory were the Ngapuhi chiefs that each of the leaders
selected as his own booty the war-canoe that seemed handsomest in his
eyes. Hongi had never heard of the device by which Mahomet II. captured
Constantinople, but he was a man of original methods, and he decided
that canoes could be dragged twenty miles or more from the sea-coast
to Lake Roto-iti. It is said that an Arawa slave or renegade in his
camp suggested the expedient and pointed out the easiest road. At any
rate the long haul was successfully achieved, and the canoes of the
Plumed Ones--Ngapuhi--paddled from Roto-iti into Roto-rua. Then all was
over except the slaughter, for the Mokoians had but half-a-dozen guns,
and Hongi’s musketeers from their canoes could pick them off without
landing.
[Illustration: EVENING ON LAKE ROTO-RUA]
Fifteen hundred men, women, and children are said to have perished
in the final massacre. Whether these figures were “official” I cannot
say. The numbers of the slain computed in the Maori stories of their
wars between 1816 and 1836 are sometimes staggering; but scant mercy
was shown, and all tradition concurs in rating the death-roll far
higher than anything known before or after. And Mokoia was crowded with
refugees when it fell before Hongi’s warriors. Of course, many of the
islanders escaped. Among them a strong swimmer, Hori (George) Haupapa,
took to the lake and managed to swim to the farther shore. The life
he thus saved on that day of death proved to be long, for Haupapa was
reputed to be a hundred years old when he died in peace.
The famous Hongi was certainly a savage of uncommon quickness
of perception, as his circumventing of the Mokoians in their
lake-stronghold shows. He had shrewdness enough to perceive that the
Maori tribe which should first secure firearms would hold New Zealand
at its mercy; and he was sufficient of a man of business to act upon
this theory with success and utter ruthlessness. He probably did more
to destroy his race than any white or score of whites; yet his memory
is not, so far as I know, held in special detestation by the Maori.
Two or three better qualities this destructive cannibal seems to have
had, for he protected the missionaries and advised his children to
do so likewise. Then he had a soft voice and courteous manner, and,
though not great of stature, must have been tough, for the bullet-wound
in his chest which finally killed him took two years in doing so.
Moreover, his dying exhortation to his sons, “Be strong, be brave!” was
quite in the right spirit for the last words of a Maori warrior.
Hongi would seem to be an easy name enough to pronounce. Yet none has
suffered more from “the taste and fancy of the speller” in books,
whether written by Englishmen or Colonists. Polack calls him E’Ongi,
and other early travellers, Shongee, Shongi, and Shungie. Finally Mr.
J. A. Froude, not to be outdone in inaccuracy, pleasantly disposes of
him, in _Oceana_, as “Hangi.”
“Old Colonial,” in an article written in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, gives
Mokoia as the scene of a notable encounter between Bishop Selwyn and
Tukoto, a Maori tohunga or wizard. To Selwyn, who claimed to be the
servant of an all-powerful God, the tohunga is reported to have said,
as he held out a brown withered leaf, “Can you, then, by invoking your
God, make this dead leaf green again?” The Bishop answered that no man
could do that. Thereupon Tukoto, after chanting certain incantations,
threw the leaf into the air, and, lo! its colour changed, and it
fluttered to earth fresh and green once more.
[Illustration: PLANTING POTATOES]
Among many odd stories told of the juggling feats of the vanishing race
of tohungas this is one of the most curious. More than one version of
it is to be found. For example, my friend Edward Tregear, in his book
_The Maori Race_, relates it as an episode of a meeting between Selwyn
and Te Heu Heu, where the trick was the _riposte_ of the chief to
an appeal by the Bishop to him to change his faith. In that case the
place of the encounter could scarcely have been Mokoia, or the tohunga
have been Tukoto.
Whatever may be said--and a great deal may be said--against the
tohunga as the foe of healing and knowledge, the religious prophets
who from time to time rise among the Maori are not always entirely
bad influences. A certain Rua, who just now commands belief among his
countrymen, has managed to induce a following to found a well-built
village on a hill-side among the forests of the Uriwera country. There,
attended by several wives, he inhabits a comfortable house. Hard
by rises a large circular temple, a wonderful effort of his native
workmen. He has power enough to prohibit tobacco and alcohol in his
settlement, to enforce sanitary rules, and to make his disciples clear
and cultivate a large farm. Except that he forbids children from going
to school, he does not appear to set himself against the Government. He
poses, I understand, as a successor of Christ, and is supposed to be
able to walk on the surface of water. His followers were anxious for
ocular proof of this, and a hint of their desire was conveyed to the
prophet. He assembled them on a river’s bank and gravely inquired, “Do
you all from your hearts believe that I can walk on that water?” “We
do,” was the response. “Then it is not necessary for me to do it,” said
he, and walked composedly back to his hut.