Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/140

82 patterns of shifting oil; effervescing gas bubbles in the lake; and splashing and rumbling in steaming fissures.

Not the least interesting of my discoveries were the bits of pumice on the lake shore. They had the appearance of stone, but they were only the froth of stone, bits of lava scum that overran volcanoes ages ago. They were so light that they floated. In the North Island millions of tons of pumice have been discharged from volcanoes, and on the Kaingaroa Plains fully ten thousand square miles have been covered with it. Once believed to be valueless, pumice soil has been found suitable for agriculture, and the settlement of pumice wastes promises to become general in New Zealand.

Rotorua is the greatest picnic ground of a truly picnic land. Every day of the year it has picnics and excursions, "weather and other circumstances permitting," as Australasian steamship agents say. Rotorua is a place of early "calls" and early breakfasts; then away, in whirling clouds of dust, in horse and motor coaches, to Whakarewarewa's geysers, to the infernos of Tikitere, to buried Wairoa, to steaming Rotomohana and suffocated Waimangu; or away to sparkling Hamurana or the bosoms of trout-infested lakes. Every morning for a fortnight there is something different to see; then ho! for the geysers of distant Taupo and Wairakei or to restful Te Aroha and its wooded mountain.

Steam heat, boiling mud, and baths are not the only attractions Rotorua offers its visitors. At the time of my