Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/450

406 Ten miles from Waimate, I ascended a truncated cone-shaped hill, terminating in the most symmetrical and perfect crater I have ever seen, forming a circular bowl, nearly 300 feet in depth, and much about the same in diameter, strewed over with fragments of scoriaceous lava, basalt, and greenstone, and densely lined with trees and tangled underwood, through which, after some little difficulty, I scrambled to the bottom; where the almost death-like solitude of the scene was broken only by the melodious note of that elegant and singular bird, the Tui (Meliphaga concinnata), which, like the American mocking-thrush, imitates the notes of every other bird in the forest.

On one side of the hill is a steep ravine, which once gave exit to the lava current, but is now separated by an embankment of scoriæ, which here completes the rim of the crater. Numerous ancient native "pahs" crest the neighbouring hills.

About a mile to the north of this once volcanic vent, which has long been in a state of repose, are some thermal springs, forming small pools in a level tract of scoriaceous lava, overgrown with rushes, from which sulphuretted hydrogen gas rose in bubbles to the surface; the grass on the margin was incrusted with a deposit of sulphur, yet the water is not unpleasantly impregnated with it.

Some miles distant are a lake and hot springs, which my time did not permit me to visit. On my return to the bay, I passed the Waitangui Falls, forming a pretty little cascade over basaltic rocks into the channel of the river beneath, where it sweeps round a sandy cove, not far from its exit into the bay. From this waterfall the river receives the name of Waitangui, meaning in the Maori, or native language, "crying, or weeping waters."

In a boat excursion I made up the river Kiddi-Kiddi, I found the banks composed of the same kind of argillaceous deposit resting on a trappean basis, as on the shores of