no6 



A US TRALASIA ILL US TRA TED. 



"The New Skin," a hot greenish-blue stream of wonderful curative properties flowing out of 

 the Lake, and forming in its course "The Water-fall," "The Fountain" and "The Cascade" 

 baths ; " The Sulphur Springs," active solfataras with deposits of pure sulphur ; Okurawai, 

 or " The Coloured Springs." a group of about a hundred boiling springs, some ejecting 

 spouts of water or clay, and all glowing with vivid colours red, pink, orange, yellow, 

 cream, gray and white, which dazzle and coruscate in the sunlight with brilliant effect ; 

 and finally, Karapiti, or "The Great Steam-hole," the largest fumarole in the Hot Lake 



country, visible for fifty miles, and with a 

 force so terrific that branches of trees 

 thrown into its screeching funnel are at 

 once hurled forth again with tremendous 

 velocity. This enumeration requires to be 

 supplemented with a brief description of 

 the Great Wairakei Geyser. Its crater is 

 a deep, triangular cavity, some twenty feet 

 wide at the top, yawning beneath a per- 

 pendicular cliff of black rock, and with its 

 pool fringed by white incrustations of silica 

 pointed and fretted like a delicate fabric 

 of lace, while gleaming in the clear depths 

 of the water lie masses of silicated rock in 

 strange coralline forms and displaying lovely 

 hues of pink, yellow and white. A large 

 incrusted rock shaped like an arm-chair 



constitutes the apex of the triangle, and at its foot the gurgling water finds an outlet. 

 The geyser, like its lesser companions, is intermittent ; the water, varying at intervals from 

 five to fifteen minutes, becoming violently agitated, and then rising rapidly into a shoot- 

 ing column from four to fifteen feet in height, sometimes attaining even a height of 

 forty feet. The eruption usually lasts about a couple of minutes, and the water then 

 as suddenly subsides. Twenty feet to the west lies the Little Wairakei, a boiling pool, 

 with small fretted white terraces. The rich mass of vegetation with which the Wairakei 

 Valley abounds forms one of its loveliest features, and from an artistic point of view 

 gives it a certain amount of pre-eminence over similar scenery in the Rotorua District. 

 Half-way between W r airakei and Taupo, and only three miles from the latter, we 

 come in sight of the Huka ("Foam") Falls, which invest this part of the Waikato 

 River with commanding interest. Local tradition has been busy with this wild spot, and 

 old-time stories make the scene romantic with associations. One such legend affirms that 

 a party of some seventy Wanganui' Maoris once in a spirit of bravado dared to shoot 

 the Falls, and that their canoe was engulphed the moment it reached the foaming 

 gorge, one chief only, who leaped on to a boulder as the rapids were entered, escaping 

 to bear home the melancholy tidings. Lake Taupo, called also by the natives Te 

 Moana, or ' I he Sea," is of an irregular oval shape, twenty-four miles across from 

 north-east to south-west, fourteen miles broad from east to west, and with a superficial 

 area of over three hundred square miles. It is nearly one thousand t\vo hundred feet 



A NATIVE "WI1AKE liUKIEl) BY THE ERUPTION. 



