6 New Zealand Institute. 



southern extremity ; among them the Upper Waikato, which, in this portion 

 of its long course, is generally called by the natives the river of Tongariro. 

 On our arrival at Tokano, as everywhere else on my tour, T was welcomed 

 with hearty respect and good- will by the local chiefs and their clansmen. Our 

 party was lodged in several Maori whares, and food was liberally provided, in 

 the absence of the supplies shipped on board our boat. 



We bathed that evening, by moonlight, in one of the many natural basins 

 into which overflow the Hot Springs, that seethe and boil amid and around 

 the kainga, or native village, of Tokano. In these fairy baths — with sides as 

 of polished marble, and bottoms as of glazed porcelain — meet, each evening, 

 the Maoris, old and young ; while from every quarter are heard gay chants 

 and songs. " But," to quote the graphic description of a recent traveller,* 

 " ever and again, even these voices are hushed and stilled, while, with a weird 

 and rushing sound, the great geyser bursts from the calm waters, rising white 

 and silvery in the moonbeams which reveal the dark outlines of the distant 

 hills, and dashing its feathery spray high against the starry sky."t 



The southern shores of Lake Taupo are the most fertile and attractive. 

 Near its south-western extremity is the Pa of Pukawa — the residence during 

 many generations of the family of Te Heuheu, oae of the most powerful 

 among the old Maori aristocracy. The father of the present chief perished 

 by an awful catastrophe in May, 1846, in the neighbouring village of Te Kapa, 

 on the shore between Pukawa and Tokano. He was buried alive during the 

 night, together with sixty of his clansmen, by a landslip, or rather by an 

 avalanche of boiling mud. To quote Hochstetter ;J " Above the springs on 

 the side of the mountain, probably 500 feet above the lake, steam issues from 

 innumerable places. The whole north side of the Kakaramea mountain seems 

 to have been boiled soft by hot steam, and to be on the point of falling in. 

 From every crack and cleft on that side of the mountain, boiling water 

 streams forth with a continual fizzing noise, as though hundreds of steam- 

 engines were in motion. These steaming fissures in the mountain side, upon 

 which every stone is decomposed into reddish clay, are called by the natives 

 Ripaoa, i.e., the chimneys ; and it was at the foot of this mountain that, in 

 the year 1846, the village of Te Kapa was overwhelmed by an avalanche of 

 mud, and the great Te Heuheu perished." Hochstetter adds that the corpse 

 of their chief was afterwards exhumed by his clansmen from the buried 

 village, and accorded a solemn interment. " According to Maori custom in 

 the case of great chiefs, the remains were disinterred after some years, laid 

 out upon a kind of bed of state, and preserved in a magnificently carved 



* Lieut, the Hon. Herbert Meade, R.N. ; see, "A Eide through New Zealand," chap. ii. 

 + The largest geyser at Tokano is called Pirori. The water is here sometimes throTvoi 

 to a height of more than forty feet. J Hochstetter's " New Zealand," chap. xvii. 



