a fine paying game for
that merry small syndicate. The conditions, however, under which white
men were bound to labour at White Island were as sad and as deplorable as
it has ever been my lot to know. Any man who decided to fill sulphur bags
at White Island knew that he was going to his last home in this world.
The conditions of life on the island were practically hopeless. The
strong sulphur fumes ate up one's vitality. One's teeth fell out. Nothing
but woollen clothes could withstand the ravages of the fumes. Eyesight
failed. The only fresh water available was that which was landed on the
Island by the schooners which carried away the sulphur bags. The spirit
of those labourers was broken, and they were content to finish their
lives under the influence of the strong and adulterated spirits with
which those same schooners supplied them, thus helping them on their
passage to another world. Sulphur (or White) Island is doubtless still
there, and, no doubt, supplying many tons of that most useful product of
this earth under very much happier conditions.

But, to hark back to the incident of the wonderful volcano upheaval which
wrecked Ohinemutu and its terraces, its mountains and its lakes. For
about a month previous to the eruptions the captains of the coastal boats
plying along the eastern coast from Wellington to Auckland, making
Gisborne, Napier and Tauranga their ports of call, noticed that when
travelling between White Island and the main coast they passed through
shoals of dead fish floating on the surface of the sea. They were
astonished at this, but they failed to arrive at any solution of the
phenomenon. It was not till after the eruptions took place that these
reports caused the Government authorities to attempt to trace a connexion
between the shoals of dead fish on the waters and the eruption at
Ohinemutu. The result of these investigations proved--as far as it was
reported at the time--that serious volcanic disturbances had been taking
place between White Island and the mainland, unknown and unseen, but the
result of which was apparently proved by the presence on the surface of
the waters of the dead or stunned fish. All boys know that a concussion
caused in waters where there are fish, stuns them and brings them to the
surface, ready to be gathered in by the enterprising but unsportsmanlike
spirit who fires off the exploding charge. That a great explosion and
upheaval had taken place within the deep sea was