FIJI-NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITION 309 
Above the site of Waimangu is an area known as Frying Pan 
Flats, so called because by hydrothermal action iron sulphide is 
deposited on loose stones as a bright yellow film. The upper part 
of the flats is occupied by a deep hot pool, which originated at 
the time of a violent eruption in 1917 which destroyed without 
warning this part of the Frying Pan only a few hours after a 
party had leisurely walked over its floor. At the time enormous 
quantities of brownish mud were thrown over the nearby hills, 
and the concussion blew the roof off the Accommodation House 
several hundred yards away. Unrestored parts of the house are 
still weighted down with tons of mud. Two persons taking refuge 
in the house were so badly gassed and injured that they died a 
few days later. This explosion left a small lake above the site of 
old Waimangu. In 1919, Mr. Warbrick, our Maori guide at Tara- 
wera, blasted away the outlet of the new lake hoping that by low- 
ering the water he might start a geyser at the lake site. The re- 
sult was a terrific explosion at the upper end of the basin as the 
water drew off. Mr. Warbrick luckily escaped injury. Mud, this 
time of a gray color, was thrown out in large quantities, covering 
a part of the brown mud of 1917. In places gullies have cut 
through both revealing the Waimangu muds of 1900 to 1908. The 
view from Accommodation House past sleeping Waimangu and the 
Paddlewheel across Rotomahana Lake to the heights of Tarawera 
is an imposing one. Here is a strip five miles long studded with 
thermal activity and in it a chasm in places 1000 feet deep. It ex- 
tends beyond the mountain three and one-half miles more, making 
it, as said before, the greatest cleft of its kind in the earth’s sur- 
face. 
Forty miles from Waimangu is Lake Taupo the largest body of 
fresh water in New Zealand. It lies in an old voleaniec erater, or 
in a combination of craters, and there is a region of hydrothermal 
activity at Wairakei near its outlet. At the time of our visit in 
1922, a series of perceptible earthquakes lasting for several weeks 
shook the region. Beyond Lake Taupo and in a line with Rotorua 
lies Tongariro National Park in which are located the volcanic 
cones of Ruapehu, Ngaurohoe, and Tongariro. The first is a 
quiescent voleano of imposing proportions; its snow-clad summit 
rises a full mile out of the plain; its ice-filled crater one mile in 
diameter is dwarfed when compared with its circular base, forty 
miles in circumference. The second is a perfectly symmetrical 
