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8 New Zealand Institute. 
comforts and luxuries of civilized life over the now lonely lakes. I thought 
‘**T beheld too in that vision 
All the secrets of the future, 
Of the distant days that shall be. 
I beheld the westward marches 
Of the unknown, crowded, nations. 
All the land was full of people, 
Restless, struggling, toiling, striving, 
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling 
But one heart-beat in their bosoms. 
In the woodlands rang their axes, 
Smoked their towns in all the valleys ; 
Over all the lakes and rivers 
Rushed their great canoes of thunder. ”* 
A very remarkable feature in this region of transcendent interest, is the 
volcanic plateau, of which Tongariro and Ruapehu are the main summits, for 
it forms a central watershed from which the five chief rivers of this Island 
flow down in their several courses to, the sea. Here, within a space of a few 
miles, are the sources of the Waikato, the Mangawhero, the Wangachu, the 
Turakina, and the Rangitikei.t While riding in the shadow of Tongariro, I 
was forcibly reminded of my early travels in Eastern Europe, and of my visit, 
in 1849, to the famous Pass and Mountain of Lacmos{ in the range of Pindus, 
between Thessaly and Epirus; whence issue the five principal rivers of 
Northern Greece, viz., the Aous, the Peneus, the Arachthus, the Haliacmon, 
and the Achelous. This is one of the many geographical parallels between 
Greece and New Zealand which must strike every classical scholar who has 
travelled in both countries. It has been said that the stirring scene presented 
under the dome of St. Paul’s on the day of the National Thanksgiving in last 
February has indefinitely postponed the advent of Macaulay’s New Zealander 
to sketch the ruins of the cathedral from a broken arch of London Bridge ; 
but, perhaps, it is not too much to hope that meanwhile there may arise in 
New Zealand a poet who will paint of the great mountain reservoir of this 
Island a word-picture, not altogether unworthy to be compared with that 
noble and original picture which Virgil, in his Fourth Georgic, has drawn of 
the vast subterranean grotto at the source of the Peneus, in which Aristeus 
was welcomed by Cyrene, his goddes-mother, and by her train of nymphs; 
* Longfellow’s ‘‘ Hiawatha,” xxi. 
+ These streams, and the country on their banks, are described in the fourth volume 
of the Transactions of the Institute (now under review), pages 128-135, in an article 
“On the Geographical and other Features of some little known portions of the Province 
Wellington.” —By Mr. H. C. Field. 
+ Now called Zygos.—See Leake’s ‘‘ Northern Greece,” chap. ix, 
