Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/198

 the gas-swept summit of Ngauruhoe; and the steaming craters of Tongariro. Here mountains have been welded together, as in a Pluton furnace. Here can be seen the celestial blue of glacier's rift to-day and the infernal glow of lava pits to-morrow.

Chief of the mountains in this park is Ruapehu, the North Island's highest elevation. The highest of its three main peaks is 9175 feet. At all times glaciers cover its upper slopes, but for three months each year it is scaled by parties of New Zealanders with comparative ease. Although Ruapehu is known to the Maoris as the Snow Mountain, it has within its snow-fields a spouting crater lake which at times is very active. This lake is five hundred feet in diameter and lies three hundred feet below the crater lip, between icy cliffs that can be descended only with the aid of ropes. Years ago an eruption of this slaty-colored tarn caused the formation of hot springs on its shores. In 1911 black and yellow mud poured into it from a vent in its walls, and later there was an eruption of red earth in the lake's centre, and at the same time black ash dust was thrown from the crater.

Ngauruhoe, Ruapehu's poisonous neighbor, is the youngest and lustiest of New Zealand's volcanoes. It has a symmetrical, corrugated cone of scoria ash, stones, and mud, 7515 feet high, and it is always discharging sulphuric acid fumes, which render dangerous a near approach to its summit.

For a decade Ngauruhoe has been getting more active every year. Twelve years ago its crater could be safely