onsequently the settlers were unable
to borrow any funds on their property, unless they applied to the Jews.
This is many years ago, and, though I have not been there lately, I
believe that it is now a most prosperous district. But how many of those
courageous original settlers or their families are there now?

In connexion with the eruption at Ohinemutu there was an incident which
it is worth while to record. Should it occur again, the record should act
as a sure warning to the residents at Rotorua. Situated some thirty miles
from the coast, to the eastwards of Tauranga, there is an island. It
rises in the shape of a conical hill clean out of the sea. It was then
known as Sulphur Island, or perhaps better as White Island. As a matter
of fact it was an old volcano, though never quite extinct. On landing at
this island you would have found that the conical hill was absolutely
hollow, and that on its base, in the inside, level with the sea, lay a
lake, whose waters were of the dark blue hue that only sulphur lakes can
show. The specific gravity of the water is very heavy, much the same as
that of the blue lake in the Mount Gambier district, in South Australia,
at the top edge of which Adam Lindsay Gordon made his famous jump over a
high fence. From both the inner and the outer crust of this shell
mountain continually poured sulphur deposits, practically pure sulphur.
On the outward side of the mountain this sulphur accumulated on the base,
towards the beach. It was indeed a glorious sight, on a moonlight night,
to look at this peak rising majestically from amidst the waves of
mid-ocean, white as a sugar-loaf, as the rays of the moon bathed it with
its silvery light.

Beautiful as it looked, it was yet tainted with the saddest of histories.
Though it was known that at some period or another it had been inhabited
by natives, yet no fresh water could then be found within its shores. The
only solution that could be found for the fact that it had been inhabited
was that some springs of fresh water existed between the low and high
water mark of the tide which were known to the then inhabitants, but the
knowledge of the situation of these springs had died with them. The
sulphur, however, almost in its pure state, was there in abundance, and
White Island, at the time I am speaking of, was leased by the Government
to a small syndicate, which employed a certain number of hands, and
exported the sulphur, chiefly to Tauranga. It was