ations resembling them, but not
their equal in fairy-like charm. One series of these terraced pools and
cascades was of the purest white tint, the other of the most delicate
pink, the waters topping over the edge of each pool and falling in a
miniature cascade to the one next below, thus keeping the edges built
up by a continual renewal of the silicious incrustation. But all their
beauty could not save them from utter and irremediable destruction by
the forces below the earth's surface.

On June 9, 1886, a great volcanic disturbance began in the Auckland Lake
region with a tremendous earthquake, followed during the night by many
others. At seven the next morning a lead-covered cloud of pumice sand,
advancing from the south, burst and discharged showers of fine dust.
The range of Mount Tarawera seemed to be in full volcanic activity,
including some craters supposed to be extinct, and embracing an area of
one hundred and twenty miles by twenty.

The showers of dust were so thick as to turn day into night for nearly
two days. Some lives were lost, and several villages were destroyed,
these being covered ten feet deep with ashes, dust and clayey mud. The
volcanic phenomena were of the most violent character, and the whole
island appears to have been more or less convulsed. Mount Tarawera is
said to be five hundred feet higher than before the eruption; glowing
masses were thrown up into the air, and tongues of fiery hue, gases or
illuminated vapors, five hundred feet wide, towered up one thousand feet
high. The mountain was 2,700 feet in height.

TARAWERA IN ERUPTION

This eruption presented a spectacle of rarely-equalled grandeur.
To travelers and strangers the greatest resultant loss will be the
destruction of those world-famous curiosities, the white and pink
terraces, in the vicinity of Lake Rotomahana and the region of the
famous geysers. The natives have a superstition that the eruption of the
extinct Tarawera was caused by the profanation of foreign footsteps. It
was to them a sacred place, and its crater a repository for their dead.
The first earthquake occurred in this region. One side of the mountain
fell in, and then the eruption began. The basin of the lake was broken
up and disappeared, but again reappeared as a boiling mud cauldron;
craters burst out in various places, and the beautiful terraces were no
more. After the first day the violence gradually diminished, and in a
week had ceased. Very possibly