SIGHT-SEEING IN NEW ZEALAND. 305 



After supper we went down among the native huts and hot 

 springs. Everywhere there were ponds and pools of hot water, 

 streams and brooks of hot water, springs innumerable that were 

 bubbling and boiling with hot water. From every crevice and 

 upturned stone the steam was issuing. Some women were put- 

 ting little bags of potatoes in the steam fumeroles for cooking. 

 One was covering up a pannikin of bread-dough in an under 

 ground oven. A lot of men were chattering away, seated on flat 

 stones that were warmed by subterranean steam. One woman 

 was taking a late bath in a hot pool, and some boys and girls 

 were jumping and splashing in a pond that we could hardly bear 

 a hand in. One had to be very careful to follow the paths, or 

 the first he knew he would be in hot water himself. One feels 

 that he is walking on a slender crust that overarches gulfs of 

 seething and boiling waters ; while the " putrid stench of sul- 

 phur," as Anthony Trollope cabled it, reminds one that he is a 

 little nearer Tartarus than sinful mortals care to be. 



The next morning I took a walk in another direction, down 

 by the carved house, meeting house, or Runanga as they call it. 

 Here was a lively settlement of the natives. As I passed along 

 the old women and the boys and girls continually asked me for 

 matches. The matches of the colonies are little cotton wicks, 

 coated with hard tallow. Well, I gave 'them all the matches I 

 had ; and when I had no more to give, I handed them out small 

 money to buy them with ; all the time wondering what they 

 could possibly want of matches, where they never thought of 

 lighting a fire. But down in front of the carved house I saw a 

 bevy of little girls throwing a kind of home-made dice, and wax 

 matches were what the little gamblers lost or won. Here was 

 another little feature of foreign society that carried me back to 

 my own loved home, where other people's fortunes are taken 

 and played with, as these little tawny skins played my wax 

 matches. 



A little beyond this settlement, on a point of land extending 

 out into lake Hotorua, is where the natives bury their dead. No 

 sooner are the bodies put under the ground, than they are acted 

 upon and rapidly eaten up by the alkaline impregnations of the 



