38 The Hot Lake District — New Zealand. 



their lands have been taken from them, how the native birds 

 and animals have been driven out by the imported ones, and 

 how their own numbers are fast decreasing before the train of 

 European civilization, you can at once detect a tone of despair, 

 of sorrow for their dying race. Nevertheless the Maoris know 

 well that their condition and status is better now than ever it 

 has been in the past. They have four representatives in the 

 New Zealand Parliament to whom their interest are entrusted, 

 and if a Maori man chooses to engage in either mental or 

 physical work of any kind, there is nothing to prevent him 

 acquiring land, working a business or entering a profession and 

 raising himself to a level of equality with his fellow citizen. 

 The opportunity is always there, but alas the Maori chooses 

 rather to pass his life in ease, enjoying all the good things of 

 this world, and as long as he has the wherewithal to purchase 

 gin and tobacco his highest hope is realized, his greatest ambition 

 gratified. 



Let us now turn from that which satisfies our idle curiosity 

 to something which is of the greatest importance to the New 

 Zealander and the world at large, I refer now to the baths 

 whose curative properties are so well-known. 



From the very earliest times since the land was settled by 

 the present native population the Hot Springs were known by 

 the Maoris to possess healing properties. Such was the nature 

 of the different springs, varying from the strongest solutions 

 capable of nearly dissolving iron to the mildest mineral water ; 

 that the ancients living in the Hot Lake district had a bath for 

 almost every ill their bodies were liable to. The government 

 of New Zealand being at once alive to this fact, and knowing 

 the value of a thermal district, purchased most of the land 

 round Rotorua, and have now erected a splendid Sanatorium 

 with spacious grounds for the use of invalids. 



This Sanatorium and grounds form quite a feature in the 

 otherwise barren neighbourhood. The large wooden building 

 contrasting strongly with the small houses in the township and 

 natives whares ; the grounds are beautifully laid out and planted 



