1096 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



rich in its beeves and flocks, to the splendid agricultural country of which the township 

 of Te Awamutu is the centre. 



THE WONDERLAND OF NEW ZEALAND. 



The Wonderland of New Zealand is to be reached from Oxford. As the train flies 

 over the broad acres of the Matamata Estate, there may be seen in the near distance 

 the lofty extension of the range of Te Aroha, with a magnificent cascade in full view 

 coursing down its escarped face, while in the immediate foreground the eye rests upon a 

 long stretch of cultivation. The railway covers the one hundred and thirty-four miles that 

 lie between Auckland and Oxford, w 7 here it is the custom to rest for the night. 

 Starting from Oxford at seven o'clock, the coach-drive of thirty-four miles to Rotorua 

 is compassed by noon, and on alighting we find ourselves in the very centre of those 

 subterranean, hydro-thermal forces, whose sleepless activity, within a zone seventeen miles 

 in breadth and one hundred miles in length, from the base of Tongariro to the sea-coast, 

 has invested this unique district with everything that can amaze, bewilder, and impress 

 the beholder. The balcony of "Lake House" commands an extensive view over the blue 

 waters of Lake Rotorua, which is twenty-seven miles in circumference ; and the native 

 village of Ohinemutu at the base of a jutting peninsula is in the immediate foreground, 

 half a mile from it is Sulphur Point, with its sanatorium, comprising hospital and baths, 

 erected by the Government at a cost of twenty thousand pounds, and in the middle 

 distance of the Lake is the island of Mokoia, to which, according to the poetic Maori 

 legend, the beautiful maiden Hinemoa was wont to swim in order to keep tryst with 

 her lover Tutanekai. First impressions are slightly alarming. A powerful smell of sulphur 

 pervades the atmosphere, the surface of the ground feels too suggestively warm to the 

 touch, and the eye is dismayed by the appearance of ebullient springs of clear water 

 or of filthy mud on every hand. The feature of the village is its ivhare-puni, or carved 

 meeting-house an oblong span-roof shed, with its ridge-pole supported by one of those 

 grotesque Maori images which are endlessly repeated in all the carved specimens of 

 their pantheon a disproportionately large and stolid head with lolling tongue and 

 nacreous eyes, the body long and narrow, the arms bent with the elbows projecting at 

 a sharp angle, the three-fingered hands folded on the stomach with an unmistakable 

 suggestion of gastronomical satiety and delight, the thighs knobby and the feet mis- 

 shapen. The arabesque scroll-work, which adorns the two massive slabs of wood that 

 form the uprights on which rest the beams sloping from the ridge-pole, is far more 

 sightly to look upon and to admire. 



Although the therapeutic qualities of the thermal springs still retain their potency 

 unimpaired, and the marvels of this weird region have been heightened and multiplied 

 rather than diminished by the terrible eruption of the ioth of July, 1886, the Parian- 

 like terraces with their cascades of limpid water, backed by a cascade of the most 

 delicate and lovely lace-work, have disappeared for ever, and the waters of Lake Roto- 

 mahana, on the margin of which they were happily set, have given place to seething 

 mounds of mud and roaring crater. The counterfeit presentment of what they were is 

 preserved in the portfolios and views of local artists, and is stereotyped on the pages 

 of countless books of travel, whose authors exhausted their powers of description in the 



