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 CHAPTER VI

The Buried Country—Earthquakes—The World's Greatest Geyser—A Hot Lake—The Wonders of Waiotapu

trip in the thermal wonderland was more interesting to me than the Round Trip. This tour leads into a buried country, through mud-imprisoned Wairoa, past entombed Te Ariki and MouraMoura,—New Zealand's Pompeii and Herculaneum,—over volcanic Rotomahana Lake and its steaming cliffs to Waimangu, a sand-choked water volcano, and to the gaping summit of fissured Tarawera, which threw red-hot stones and ashes upon the land nearly thirty years ago.

As a volcano, Tarawera was born on the night of June 10, 1886. Assisted by its neighbors, Wahanga and Ruawahia, it darkened the country for many miles with scoria stones, ashes, and dust. For four hours Tarawera rained stone and mud, and with such strength did it burst forth that its explosions were heard as far as Christchurch, five hundred miles away, while flashes of the electrical storm that broke over it were seen in Auckland, one hundred and twenty miles distant. No lava overflowed, but lava walls were formed. Miles away huge earth cracks were made, and Lake Rotorua, fifteen miles beyond, rose several inches. In Tarawera itself and in its vicinity a series of vents formed a fissure nearly nine miles long, from three hundred to fourteen