368 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Taujpo District . 
Lake Taupo is now upon the main road between Auckland, 
Wellington, Napier, and Tauranga, and is very easily reached 
by coach. It has also good accommodation for tourists and 
travellers, so that this district, and the whole of the country 
described in this paper, can be visited with comfort, and with 
no more than the usual difficulties of getting across country 
roads. Coaches run between the principal towns, and light 
buggies and saddle horses can be easily procured at Taupo, 
Tauranga, and Ohinemutu. 
Approaching Taupo from Napier, the road passes through 
lovely forest scenery of hill, valley and gorge, where the man 
of science and the artist can each find inducements to linger, 
and to wish for an extension of time in order to “ do ” the district 
thoroughly. But we pass -on, and as we surmount the last hill 
and emerge from the bush, a glorious panorama opens before 
us. Peaks, craters, and basaltic rocks stand out in bold relief 
above the timber-clothed hill-sides, and seem to strew the valley 
of Tarawera where the first evening from Napier is spent. 
The first view of Lake Taupo is very striking. The wide 
expanse of water stretches away in the distance, and is lost 
among mountain shadows, behind which rise the lofty cones of 
Tongariro and Euapehu — the former smoking or pouring forth 
its lava streams, and the latter lifting its snowy peak in silence 
to a height of 9,200 feet. 
As we approach the lake the small clouds seen around its 
borders, become distinct as columns of steam, and countless 
hot springs bear evidence to the energy of the volcanic forces 
which are apparently extinct in the numerous tuff craters around. 
The comfortable hotel, stabling, stores, &c., which, with a few 
other buildings, constitute the Taujpo township, is prettily 
situated, but the plains on every side are very barren. The 
Government have here secured a strip of active springs and 
bathing pools, but with this exception all this part of the country 
is in the hands of the Maories. Some shelter has also been 
provided here for visitors to enjoy the baths without undue 
exposure to the sun or wind. The ground around is seething 
with bubbling and boiling springs, and with fumaroles and solfa- 
taras of all sizes and at all temperatures ; from tiny cups of 
creamy liquid, to vast cauldrons in trachytic rock, inerusted 
with glistening crystalline sulphurous deposits ; or with siliceous 
sinter, more or less tinted with ferric oxide. 
In this neighbourhood there is a very remarkable geyser cone, 
which, covering an area of nearly twenty feet in diameter, rises 
to about six or seven feet ; the crater is an oval of six feet mean 
