Collie. — On Volcanoes and Geysers of New Zealand. 419 



to the wayfarer of to-day amongst these mteresting scenes : — " Whence the 

 activity which still pours forth the boiling waters of Eotomahana to run 

 gHstening down the silica terraces of their own constant formation— 

 wherein the force that lights the red fires which burn ever in the crater of 

 White Island — or what the motive power that still throws up a cone in the 

 crater of Tongariro (Ngauruhoe) ?" The reply from the waters of Eotoma- 

 hana, from the fires of White Island, and from the cone of Tongariro was 

 the same — the one word, " 8ulphu7\'" Whether the almost universally 

 imagined heat of the interior of the earth has any existence in fact does 

 not materially affect the subject ; for it was enough to the observer that 

 sulphur in its natural state lay beneath the crust of the earth in beds 

 of greater or less extent, being self-combustible when heated and moist, 

 smouldering for long years — burning near the surface sufficient to melt the 

 rocks and throw them out as lava and pumice amidst fire and smoke, and 

 with reports like cannon — or heating the internal waters which came into 

 contact with it, and forcing them up as minerally impregnated geysers, or 

 as sulphurous steam. It was easy to follow out the idea and conceive how 

 these inflammably begot forces, confined in the interior and unable to 

 escape, have raised the land into mountain-masses ; or, as the material con- 

 sumed, have caused the crust of the earth, sometimes gradually, at other 

 times violently, to sink into the empty caverns. Hence earthquakes but 

 wait upon the sulphur fires below, and attest their wide-spread power. 

 Whether at boiling cauldron or bursting crater the only inflammable or 

 explosive substance to be seen is Sulphur, and the only effect observable is 

 that from its fire. Steaming basins, smoking craters, and destroying earth- 

 quakes, it may be safely assumed, never occur without the presence of 

 Sulphur as the good or evil genius of the phenomena. 



Eotomahana. — During the writer's stay at the Terraces he was favoured 

 with an exhibition of the subsidence of the waters of Te Tarata into the 

 caverns below ; and as the Terraces on that occasion got dry, it was note- 

 worthy how brittle the sihcious surface became, showing upon what a 

 slender thread the beauties of that mountain side hang ; for, were the flow 

 of the blue waters to stop, as stop it must when the energies of the forces 

 below exhaust themselves, the glory as well as the cause of Eotomahana 

 wiU disappear. 



Tongariro (Ngauruhoe). — When the writer visited the crater of Tonga- 

 riro in May of last year, there was a cone on the north-west side of it. 

 This cone was about 120 feet wide at the top, and was closed at the bottom 

 as if the volcano had not been in action for a considerable time. Upon the 

 writer's climbing the mountain (a feat always attended with difficulty and 

 risk) and descending into the crater, in December following, he found that 



