DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF NEW ZEALAND. 



1107 



above sea-level, and the air is clear, dry and bracing. The lacustrine scenery is not 

 particularly prepossessing or impressive. Low shores marked by few indentations or 

 rocky promontories, a singular poverty of foliage, and one island only on Taupo's broad 

 and shimmering bosom, are its distinguishing features ; and these are hardly sufficient 







'HIE FERNS OF NEW ZEALAND. 



to endow it with any great beauty. Still, on a cloud- 

 less day, the prospect to the southward has powerful 

 attractions in the graceful cone of Tongariro with its 



fleecy canopy of steam, and with the huge bulk of Ruapehu still farther in the back- 

 ground, dwarfing all its neig'hbour peaks. The village of Taupo, or Tapu-wae-haruru, 

 " The Place of Sounding Footsteps," so called from the hollow cavernous sound of one's 

 feet on the pumice plain, is situated on a flat directly overlooking the northern shore 

 of the Lake, and some thirty or forty feet above it. 



The visitor may notice that the water near the shore, a mile or so to the left, is 

 steaming for some distance, denoting the presence of subaqueous boiling springs, and 

 this phenomenon will prepare him for others of a like kind in the locality. On the 



