250 
old folks sitting at the door hailed us with their cordial “Tena- 
koe,” while the black-eyed, half-naked children were staring at us 
with amazement, probably at a loss to know, what the two men 
with hammers in their hands were about. The plantings about 
the huts, consisting of potatoes, cabbage and other culinary vege- 
tables, were in a tolerably good state of cultivation, and surrounded 
with a wall of lava-blocks piled up one above the other four 
feet high , up which pretty lianas of luxuriant verdure were 
climbing. 
Our object was , to visit and to examine the most easterly of 
the three cones , called Takapuna by the natives, and 216 feet high. 
It forms the North-head of Auckland Harbour, is of an almost 
hemispherical shape and on three sides washed by the sea, from 
which it rises in steep ascent. It is the most interesting of the 
North-shore hills. 
W E 
7.16 ' 
Takapuna, the North head of Auckland Harbour. 
The first eruptions were here evidently submarine, the basis 
of the hill round about being formed of regular layers 20 to 40 feet 
thick. These layers consist of volcanic ashes, scoriae and lava-frag- 
ments baked into a solid breccia , and with an outward inclination 
at an angle of 12 degrees, so that at low- water, at the foot of the 
cliff's, which are 20 to 30, some even 40 feet high, the traveller can 
walk on the lower strata swept clean by the rolling surge, nearly all 
around the hill as on a roof inclined at an angle of 12 degrees. 
We made the attempt; of course we had at some places to climb 
along rock-walls upon projections scarcely half a foot wide, below 
which the foaming sea was dashing up its spray. At last we ar- 
rived at a point, where the surge had washed out a deep cave. 
Its walls were entirely lined with a salt-crust. Here large blocks of 
rock prevented our advancing farther, and we were obliged to climb 
