Ohinemutu at any
moment. What signifies it that matters have remained in their present
condition for perhaps a thousand years? The liability to an outburst is
none the less on that account. Such is the history of all eruptions:
centuries elapse of comparative quiet and seeming immunity from serious
danger,--and then comes a great and awful explosion! Confined steam,
boiling water, and burning sulphur must somewhere and somehow find vent
at the surface. The seething and subdued roaring which never ceases are
a constant warning to this effect. And yet here both Europeans and
natives live on, and give the possible contingency never a thought.

Within pistol-shot of where these notes were originally made, there was
before our eyes a half sunken point jutting out into Lake Rotorua which
has "gradually subsided"--ominous words--so that but a small portion
remains in view. In former times a _pah_, or fort, stood upon this
point, the fate of which is briefly told. One stormy night a hoarse
rumbling noise was heard, of more than usual significance, followed by a
shrill sound of hissing steam. The trembling earth opened on the border
of the lake, and the pah with all its people sank instantly into the
raging fires below. No native can be induced to put foot upon what is
left of this peninsula at the present day. The place is _tapu_. The
visitor explores it alone, while his guide remains at a wholesome
distance. Plenty of boiling springs, sulphurous vapor-holes, and
seething mud-pools were found distributed over the place where the Maori
pah and its people were engulfed.

Although by the late eruption, so far as is known, only one hundred and
six persons--natives and Europeans--were destroyed, it included a whole
Maori village which was instantly blotted out of existence, as was the
pah on the peninsula jutting into the lake. The particulars of the late
awful visitation, unequalled in the history of New Zealand, were sad and
harrowing to listen to. There were instances where persons, still alive,
were dug from the ashes and debris miles away from the crater, after
being either buried, or partially so, for one and two days, though none
of them survived more than a few hours after exhumation. We were told of
an aged Maori whose cabin was miles distant from the burning mountain,
who was exhumed after twenty-four hours' burial. He was over one hundred
years of age, and survived three days after being recovered.

As to those far-fam