Smith. — Notes on the Kermadec Group. 339 



In Meyer Island there are several such dykes to be seen, but 

 they are here very much smaller, more regular, and stand up 

 above the surface like broken walls ; they are also andesitic in 

 composition. 



After the great crater had ceased its activity, the smaller one 

 within it, which is shown on Denham's chart, appears to have 

 been formed on its bottom. The chart of 1854 shows this as 

 a small circular lake within a ring of hills. From all the 

 information I have been enabled to gather, there was no sign 

 of activity displayed at the time of Captain Denham's 

 survey. The great crater bottom was at that time, and for 

 long after, covered with pohutukawa and nikau palms ; and 

 the soil has been described as of very great richness. The 

 little crater had apparently died out and become extinct. 



Sterndale, who passed some days on Sunday Island hi 1869, 

 makes no mention of volcanic or thermal action as then to be 

 seen, and so observant a man would certainly have done so had 

 there been any sign of such ; but in September, 1872, he visited 

 the place again, and then says : " In the early part of 1872, the 

 water in the little freshwater lake on Sunday Island began to 

 boil furiously, which was followed by a column of fire spouting 

 up from the middle of it. A whale ship in the neighbourhood, 

 seeing the flame, bore up, and took off Covat and his family. 

 . . . In September, 1872, I landed there. ... I found 

 no one, aud the place was much scorched towards the interior. 

 All signs of volcanic disturbance had disappeared, with the 

 exception of the dead trees on the hill-sides surrounding the 

 little lake, and some black cinders and ashes which were strewn 

 about the margin." 



The island was without permanent inhabitants until 1878, 

 when Mr. Bell took up his residence there, so that we have no 

 record as to whether there was any eruption subsequent to that 

 of 1872. Our fellow-townsman, Dr. Stockwell, spent three days 

 on the island in October, 1876, and he tells me that the larger 

 lake was at that time of quite a different shape to what it is 

 shown on Denham's chart, and to what it is now. It had then 

 somewhat of a serpentine shape, the banks were covered with 

 mud, and altogether it was of smaller size than at present. A 

 little vegetation was seen on the southern walls of the great 

 crater; but in a direct line from the little crater, (or as it is now 

 called, the Green Lake,) towards Bell's homestead, there was no 

 sign of vegetation, nothing but bare consolidated mud and frag- 

 ments of rock. This belt was about a quarter of a mile wide. 

 The walls of the great crater, on the east and north-east sides, 

 had not been affected by the mud thrown out so copiously, but 

 in the other parts there was a good deal of it scattered about. 

 At the present time this belt of mud is so thickly covered with 

 vegetation that nearly all signs of the eruption have disappeared. 



