agination, be called rich and fertile. But the island
demonstrates the "falsehood of extremes," for between them is found
some of the finest and pleasantest land in the southern hemisphere.
Nearly all of this, however, lies within fifty miles of one or other
coast. When you have left these tracts, and have risen a thousand feet
or so, you come to a volcanic plateau, clad for the most part in dark
green and rusty bracken or tussocks of faded yellow. Right in the
centre rise the great volcanoes, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Tarawera,
majestic in their outlines, fascinating because of the restless fires
within and the outbreaks which have been and will again take place.
Scattered about this plateau are lakes of every shape and size,
from Taupo--called Te Moana (the sea) by the Maoris--to the tiniest
lakelets and ponds. Here are found pools and springs of every degree
of heat. Some are boiling cauldrons into which the unwary fall now and
again to meet a death terrible, yet--if the dying words of some of
them may be believed--not always agonizing, so completely does the
shock of contact with the boiling water kill the nervous system. Many
pools are the colour of black broth. Foul with mud and sulphur, they
seethe and splutter in their dark pits, sending up clouds of steam and
sulphurous fumes. Others are of the clearest green or deepest, purest
blue, through which thousands of silver bubbles shoot up to the
surface, flash, and vanish. But the main use of the hot
springs is found in their combination of certain chemical
properties,--sulphur-acid, sulphur-alkaline. Nowhere in the world,
probably, are found healing waters at once so powerful and so various
in their uses. Generations ago the Maori tribes knew something of
their effects. Now invalids come from far and near in hundreds and
thousands, and when the distractions and appliances of the sanitary
stations equal those of the European spas they will come in tens
of thousands, for the plateau is not only a health-resort but
a wonderland. Its geysers rank with those of Iceland and the
Yellowstone. Seen in the clear sunny air, these columns of water and
white foam, mounting, swaying, blown by the wind into silver spray,
and with attendant rainbows glittering in the light, are sights which
silence even the chattering tourist for a while. Solfataras, mud
volcanoes and fumaroles are counted in hundreds in the volcanic zone.
If there were not such curiosities, still the beauty of the mo