Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

432 AUSTRALASIA.embracing uearl}' the wliole island away to the easternmost headlands. Thewestern slopes of the extinct volcano are finely timbered, while on the other sidestretches the uninhabitable Onetapu desert thickly strewn with the ashes and scoriaeejected from the Ruapehu craters at some unknown epoch.But at one time eventhis dreary solitude was covered with large forest trees, whose charred stems arefound beneath the overlying refuse.A level space of about 5 miles separates the base of Ruapehu from that of thestill active Tongariro volcano, which rises farther north on a pedestal about 3,000feet high. But the deep trough encircling the mountain seems to show thatperhaps at one time there stood on this spot a vast crater, from which graduallyrose the Tongariro cone, a perfectly regular pile of ashes and scoria), whose terminalcrater according to NichoUs is now about 8,200 feet high. The volcano, nearlyalways in a state of eruption, was till recently strictly " tabooed " by the natives.Nevertheless it has been scaled, its summit affording a superb view of the greatcrater and smaller lateral mouths vomiting forth dense clouds of sulphurousvapours. Across the wreaths of smoke waving on the breeze the observer detectsa few pools of blue water flooding the terminal depressions of the parasiticvolcanoes. Farther north Mount Ketotahi also discharges dense vapours, whilethe regular cone of Mount Pihanga, commanding the south side of the great LakeTaupo, has long been extinct. A Maori chief recently deceased has bequeathedthe volcanic masses of Ruapehu and Tongariro to the New Zealand fieople asa " national park," to be guarded for ever from the encroachments of privateproperty.Lake Taupo, occupying almost exactly the geographical centre of NorthIsland, also belongs to the New Zealand volcanic system ;the hypothesis has evenbeen advanced that it was formerly a crater of prodigious size. This view iscertainly not justified by the irregxilar form of the basin, which, however, isbordered by volcanoes, whence have been discharged enormous quantities of lava,pumice and scorite. The first eruj^tions jDrobably took place beneath the sea, theejected matter gradually' separating from the ocean a large inlet, which in courseof time became transformed to a saltwater and then to a freshwater lake by theaction of rain, snow and other agencies.It is a remarkable coincidence that the Maori word Taujjo has the meaning of" Formerly Flooded RocTi," as if the natives had a tradition about the gradualupheaval of the land.doniinant along the main axis consists ofAll the central ptirt of the island west of the old formationspumice several hundred yards thick andcovered with humus partly derived from disintegrated trachytes.The mountaii.sin the east, the volcanoes in the west and the ashes and scoria in the intermediatespace, have pent up the central reservoir, thereby raising its level to the convexsurface of the shield-shaped plateau which occupies the central part of NorthIsland. Taupo stood at one time even at a higher level, as shown by the clearlines of the old beaches along the face of the surrounding slopes. But it has beenpartly emptied by the emissary, which has gradually eroded the heaps of pumiceconfining the lacustrine basin on the north side. At present the level of the lake