375 
although in strong condition and a good walker, I felt completely done up, 
and I fell asleep in a dry water-course. The night was cold, but I slept 
soundly until daylight, when I immediately rose and continued my descent, 
and at 10, a. m. , I reached my residence at Rotoaire, with the shoes almost 
torn off my feet. 
This account agrees in its main-points perfectly with Mr. Bid- 
will’s descriptions. 1 The Ngauruhoe crater, consequently, seems to he 
at present in the state of a solfatara throwing out continually large 
masses of steam and other kinds of vapour. The natives know 
nothing of lava-flows; yet from time to time the crater is said to 
eject cinders and hot mud, and during such eruptions, now and 
then , a fiery shine is said to be visible over the mountain . 2 Such 
is specially said to have been the case in the month of February, 
in 1857, when the ejection of cinders and ashes lasted from two 
to three weeks. Such ejections seem to exercise a changing in- 
fluence upon the topmost craterlip. I always saw the point of the 
Peak of the Ngauruhoe , April 1859 , 
seen from North. seen from West. 
cone such , that it was evident, the western lip of the crater was 
necessarily much lower than the eastern. A trifling change however, 
seems to have taken place since, concerning which my friend 
Dr. Haast writes to me as follows: Mr. Cli. Smith of Whanganui 
sojourned in the month of December 1859 in Tokanu at Lake 
Taupo for the purpose of negotiating with Te Herekiekie, the 
chief of that district, concerning a pasture for sheep. He related 
1 See Dieffenbach I. p. 347—355. 
2 Taylor (p. 2-25) mentions, that in olden times the natives, whenever they 
saw fire upon Tongariro, considered it as a command of their Atua (God) towage 
war, and that the inhabitants of the coast were then expecting an attack from the 
Taupo lake. 
