Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/118

68 volcanic hills of New Zealand, looks like a succession of terraces or steps. This was not its original shape; the terraces were made by warring Maoris. Eden is a great scoria heap that rises six hundred and forty feet above the sea. In it deep pits have been dug to get scoria for building material, streets, and railroad ballast, and at its base to-day stone quarries are worked. Mount Eden is surely one of the most romantic and historical spots of New Zealand. Around it hover memories of war and intrigue, love and shadowy tradition. Where sheep now peacefully browse, human blood flowed and hideous clamor rose, for it was long the chief fort of the Tainui tribe, which started the first Maori war in New Zealand, and in the large earthworks food-pits of warriors are still seen to-day.

On Mount Eden I stood in the midst of a volcanic region, and on the verge of a crater one hundred and twenty feet deep. At its bottom were scoria stones that once were red-hot, and from its grassy slopes, everywhere marked by sheep tracks, red scoria obtruded. Over the tops of the mountain's pines I saw many isolated terraced hills, set in wildernesses of broken stones; all fiery furnaces once. Within a radius of five miles of Mount Eden there are said to be fifty extinct volcanoes. First nature threw missiles from them; centuries later came the Maoris, who converted them into forts, and from their heights hurled spears and swung stone axes, and heavy clubs of stone and wood. The view from Eden's summit is one of the finest