Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/202

 The Ultima Thule, or, according to legend, the portal, of New Zealand's thermal wonderland, is White Island, twenty-seven miles off the coast of the Bay of Plenty. White Island is a queer place. It is a sulphur pit, an acid tank. On it sulphur boils like treacle, and from a warm lake acidulous waters pour into the sea.

On White Island one must tread carefully, and test the treacherous ground as one goes. This quaking pile of rock and clay is a sibilant, roaring pandemonium of steam. Add to this the harsh screams of thousands of sea-birds, and the imaginative visitor can readily fancy himself at the entrance of an abysmal, fiendish world where ghoulish vultures wait to strike and tear.

Seldom does White Island have visitors, for its terrifying shores are inhospitable and difficult of approach. "Keep off! We do not want you here," its threatening fumaroles seem to say. Its rocks provide no sheltering harbor in time of storm, and landing places are few. In one place only can even a small steamer put passengers ashore, and often this is impossible. Once each year an Auckland steamship company advertises an excursion to White Island, usually in February, but for four consecutive years it was unable to land passengers there. Occasionally launch parties reach the island, but they frequently have to wait weeks for a favorable sea. Years ago a Tauranga sulphur company operated a sulphur mine on the island, but it finally abandoned the work because its boats could not make landings often enough to keep its factory supplied with sulphur. In 1912