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now and then, that they play all together; the natives assert, that 
such is generally the case during heavy easterly gales. 1 was not 
fortunate enough myself, to witness such a grand spectacle, but 
had to content myself with observing a small eruption of one of 
them, the Waikite. It issues from the top of a Hat silicious cone, 
Waikite., intermittent fountain at Wliakarcwarcwa on the Rotorua. 
measuring 100 feet in diameter and 15 feet high, which rising 
between green manuka and fern-bushes, presents an extremely pic- 
turesque sight. The cone consists of white silicious deposit; it has 
numerous- fissures and crevices , which are all incrustated with neat 
sulphur-crystals; the hot vapours, however, issuing from those fis- 
sures, smell neither of sulphurous acid, nor of sulphuretted hydrogen, 
but merely of sublimated sulphur. At intervals of about eight 
minutes the Waikite throw out a column of water two or three 
feet thick to a height of six to eight feet. But in January and 
February, Mr. Spencer told me, it shows itself in its full glory, 
spouting to a height of 30 to 35 feet. A little S. E. of the 
Waikite is the Pohutu. 1 Its basin is 12 feet wide; the masses of sili- 
1 Comp, the view of the Pohutu in chap. JI. p. 44. 
