When, early on the following morning, we steamed into Tauranga Harbour, the sea was as smooth as a sheet of glass, the heavens were blue and cloudless, and the town, the fern-clad hills, and the mountains in the distance, completed one of the most attractive pictures of New Zealand scenery I had ever beheld. In front the neat white houses of the settlement rose from the very edge of the lake-like expanse of water, the country beyond lay stretched before the gaze in a broad expanse of green, whilst the bold outline of the coast, with its jutting headlands, extended for miles on either side.
[Illustration: WHAKARI, OR WHITE ISLAND.]
Tauranga is not a large place, but its situation is delightful. It is built mostly along the west shore of the harbour, and commands a splendid view of the great ocean beyond, with its picturesque islands, which rise in fantastic shape, from the broad surface of the Bay of Plenty. The harbour, which is completely landlocked, and safe in all weathers, stretches out before the town in the form of an inland lake. The rugged islands of Tuhua, Karewha, and Motiti rise abruptly from the surrounding sea, while in the distance, towards the east, the geysers and boiling springs of Whakari send up their clouds of steam.
Whakari, or White Island, which lies about thirty miles from the shore in the Bay of Plenty, is a cone-shaped mountain rising abruptly from the sea to an altitude of 860 feet. The crater, about a mile and a half in circumference, is in the condition of a very active solfatara, whose numerous geysers and boiling springs evolve at all times dense volumes of steam and sulphurous gases. There are large deposits of sulphur surrounding the crater, and several small warm lakes of sulphurous water. It lies in the line of active thermal action which stretches across the North Island through the Lake Country to the volcano of Tongariro, with which, according to native tradition, it is supposed to be connected by a subterranean channel.
The small rocky island of Karewha in the Bay of Plenty is remarkable as being the only remaining abode of the _tuatara_ (_Hatteria punctata_,[15]) the largest lizard in New Zealand. It is a non-venomous reptile, about eighteen inches long, with a ridge of sharp-pointed spines like a fringe down its back, and which it raises or depresses at pleasure.