,io8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



farther bank nestles a small Maori settlement. In fact, the shores of the Lake are 

 studded with such settlements and with the remains of antique pahs, for Taupo was once 

 the centre of a very numerous aboriginal population. The verdant crest of Tauhara, an 

 isolated wooded mountain standing about four miles from the township, attracts the eye 

 of the traveller, forming one of those picturesque morccan.v that the painter would not 

 willingly omit from his canvas. From a cliff, overhanging a picturesque gorge through 

 which the Waikato flows, about a mile from the township, may be seen a number of 

 columns of steam issuing from springs on the right-hand bank. As the eye rests 

 carelessly upon them, there suddenly bursts from a funnel of silica, looking for all the 

 world like a large nest built of loose sticks, a pillar of hot water shooting boldly up 

 into the air to a height of perhaps fifty feet or so, describing a beautiful curve, and 

 descending in foam. This is known as " The Crow's Nest." Hard by it, there is a 

 circular cavity in the high river-bank, its sides covered with incrustations of red, crimson, 

 green, orange, yellow, black and brown ; and, at its bottom, is a boiling pool of blue 

 water throwing off clouds of dense steam. This is " The Witch's Chauldron." On the top 

 of the bank, and one hundred yards from the River, in the midst of a clump of 

 manuka scrub, lies " Big Ben," an aperture some fifteen feet deep, at the bottom of 

 which the mud is boiling to the accompaniment of a dull throbbing noise, like the beat 

 of a steamer's screw. 



From this spot it is only a short walk to Glen Loffley, with its douche, plunge, 

 swimming and vapour baths. A track extending along the north-eastern side of Tauhara 

 leads up to Rotokawa, or the Bitter Lake, eight miles distant. It measures a mile long 

 by three-quarters of a mile broad, and its waters have a nauseous sweet-acid taste. 

 Fine slabs of sulphur glittering with crystals may be dug anywhere beyond the Lake. 

 At the extreme south-western end of Taupo, within the recess of a pretty bay, lies 

 ensconced the native settlement of Tokaano in the midst of hot alkaline springs giving 

 forth volumes of steam. There is also a chalybeate spring of one hundred and fifty-six 

 degrees Fahrenheit, which deposits large quantities of iron ochre. Some five hundred 

 feet above the Lake, on the sides of the Kakaramea Mountain, hot steam and boiling 

 water are pouring out from clefts and fissures with a continual fizzing noise. In fact, 

 as one writer has aptly remarked, this side of the Mountain seems to have been boiled 

 soft, and to be on the point of falling in. It was here that in 1846 an avalanche of 

 mud overwhelmed a native village, and buried alive the powerful chief Te Heu Heu 

 and his harem of wives, together with upwards of sixty of his devoted followers. 

 Hochstetter says : " I believe if anyone at Tokaano or on the declivity of the Kaka- 

 ramea would endeavour to count the several spots which give out either hot water, 

 steam, or boiling mud, he would find more than five hundred of them." 



At Tokaano we are almost upon the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude, which separates 

 the province of Auckland from the provinces of Hawke's Bay and Wellington. The 

 distance to Napier, on the east coast, is about one hundred miles, and some practical 

 conception of the advantage of railway travelling is obtained from a consideration of the 

 fact that the coach-journey will take two days. The Napier coach leaves Taupo at 

 seven o'clock in the morning, and the route strikes away to the south-eastward across 

 the Kaimanawa Range and the Rangitaiki River to Runanga. For the first twenty-four 



