And yet it is difficult to say which was the more inspiring,--the sweet, suggestive hours of the moon's reign, or those of the delicious break of day across the lake, so quickly followed by the sunrise. How responsive were the waiting waters to every fresh hue and color of the returning morn! The moonlight had recalled many thoughts of the past, memories both sad and joyous; while the sunlight was full of hope, promise, and present grandeur. Those of our readers who have seen at the foot of the Maritime Alps, on the shores of the Mediterranean, the change of night into morning, will most readily understand what the break of day really is over Lake Rotorua.
Once fairly within the area of this south land of varied wonders, the most active volcanic region of the Antipodes, nothing seems too strange to be true; geysers, fumaroles, boiling springs, and dry stones burning hot beneath one's feet, as though the surface of the land covered Nature's chemical laboratory, are all regarded by the visitor as quite the proper thing,--in fact, just what is to be expected. Even the scores of naked Maori bathers, of both sexes, outrage no sense of propriety in this weird atmosphere of Ohinemutu. One seems to be surrounded by a race upon whose semi-civilization the era of clothes has not yet dawned. The Maori inhabitants of Wairoa, the native town which was so recently buried with all its people by a volcanic outburst, had no more reason to anticipate any immediate danger than have these natives on the banks of Lake Rotorua. Indeed, so far as external evidence of subterranean volcanic force is concerned, the inhabitants of Wairoa had not one half the threatening tokens about them that exist here at every turn. Sulphur, alkaline, and iron-impregnated pools of inviting temperature induce one to indulge in frequent baths, and it seems but natural that the natives in their semi-nude condition should pass so much of their time in the water, both sexes mingling in this pleasure as they would do in the ordinary avocations of life. Near to the shore, where the lake is shallow, a boiling spring forces its way to the surface of the surrounding cold water, telling of a submerged fiery caldron underlying the lake at that particular point. It was, however, no more significant than the scores of other steam-holes and spouting geysers which force themselves to the surface all about this sulphurous region. In short, the town of Ohinemutu is built on a thin crust, roofing over, as it were, a vast fiery furnace, whose volcanic eccentricities form the marvel of the locality.