Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/201

 entered, but recently there have been frequent emissions of steam and dust. In 1909 the volcano discharged scoria ash; in 1911, Dr. Marshall, of the Otago University, saw glowing lava in its red inferno and heard gas escape from it with violence. Later visitors heard what they believed to be "the roar of churned waters," and the crashing of boulders in one of the two active craters. From a precipice overlooking a hot lake long streamers of steam issued, and from crateral depths came nauseous odors.

A third party found the ground so hot at the top that it was uncomfortable to stand long in one spot, and the noise of escaping steam was so great that it was impossible to converse. Still others, from the plains miles below, say they saw shooting flames, fire-balls, lightning, and clouds of black smoke. The leaping flames, however, may have been merely the reflections of burning lava on clouds.

In its spasmodic action, Ngauruhoe resembles Vesuvius, Mont Pêlée, and Karakatoa; and it is also similar to these mountains in its rock compositions.

A very active mountain is Tongariro, which has been united to Ngauruhoe, more than a thousand feet higher than it, by lava overflows. Tongariro's active craters, Te Mari and the Red Crater, incessantly expel steam, often with noisy force. In places Tongariro's slopes are riddled with fumaroles, in scoria cavities are hot pools, and more than four thousand feet above the sea are the steam-canopied Ketetahi Springs.