Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/48

 Presently the track widens and the forest gets thinner. We round a rocky bluff, and there—before us, far below, in the distance—shimmering through the tree-boles as if the azure vault had fallen to earth, we get our first glimpse of Rotorua.

Mokoia Island in the centre, white cliffs on the further side, faint curling cloudlets of steam on the hither shore. There is a general long-drawn sigh, and then exclamations of pleasure, delight, and surprise burst from every lip.

We receive a hearty, noisy greeting from a cartload of merry Maoris as they drive past, and very shortly we rattle across the bridge over the hot steaming creek, and find ourselves at friend Kelly's Palace Hotel, in far-famed Ohinemutu.

Steam everywhere, and an all-pervading sulphurous stench, apprise us very forcibly that we are now in the hot lake country. After a luxurious half-hour spent in the warm natural bath attached to the hotel, we take a languid stroll down by the beach, and survey the native settlement. The evening meal—potatoes and whitebait—is being cooked. The sound of incessant ebullition is at first almost awe inspiring. One realizes what a thin crust alone intervenes between one's shoe soles and the diabolical seething cauldron beneath. Naked children are bathing in a deep pool by the lake. Culinary matrons, gaudily dressed of course, squat and gossip round the steaming, sputtering holes, in which their viands are being cooked, and