Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/65

 of gray pumice stand out in lonely isolation from the steep point of yonder rounded hill. The truncated cone of Mount Tarawera stands up black against us yonder; while Mount Edgecombe, a very Saul amongst the others, rears his towering crest far, far away, his base being lost in the curve of distance.

We pass the Devil's Rock, on which it was customary formerly to deposit some offering to propitiate "Taipo" (the Maori equivalent for Satan) into giving the votary a fair wind; the offering being flowers, twigs of trees, fruit, fish, &c. Kate suggests that the white folks generally put pennies on the rock now instead of twigs; but the surroundings, not being favourable to the growth of a superstitious credulity, we ignore the possibility of satanic interference in pur affairs, and defy "the devil and all his works."

We pull in now to a native settlement, where for sundry white coin we procure two kits of black grewsome-looking [sic] fresh-water prawns and a kit of very inferior apples.

Turning a point, with a solitary shag sitting reflectively on a partly-submerged tree-trunk, we enter another long arm or gulf, and find it terminates in a marshy flat, with a few huts dumped down promiscuously on the rising ground at the back, and a strong running creek bisecting the level delta; and on either side white cliffs, draped in part with ferns, and with steam rising up from hot springs at their base. On ahead, amid burnt-looking bleak hummocks, we see more steam