IF EDGECUMBE WOKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 135, 9 June 1926, Page 16

IF EDGECUMBE WOKE.

THE SPIRIT OF THE VOLCANO.

(By J.C.)

It is not altogether easy for one who has travelled much about our New Zealand volcanic country and who has studied the geological history of the land, to believe that all those extinct volcanic coiled of ours north of Tong.-i----riro region are forever dead, incapable of further fiery activity. Many besides professed geologists have speculated on the possible sudden renewal of ferocious life in such familiar hills as Mount Kden and Rangitoto. But there is a mountain that above all others has eeemed to mc charged with the possibilities of a great awakening, and that is Mount Edgecumbe, called by the Alaoris, Putauaki.

This mountain, with an altitude mapped as 2940 feet, is emphatically a height to challenge one's imagination. }>"o mountain except Ngauruhoe looks more perfectly and absolutely the fitting cupola and chimney for the earth's unresting tires.

Rising from pumice plains at the northern edge of the great Kaingaroa Plateau, and with the Tarawera and Kangitaiki Rivers sweeping past its broad base, it is an even more dominating mountain than Ngauruhoe, which, although 7500 odd feet above sea level, is practically the same height above the tableland as Putauaki is. Solitary, ~'J!d and sharply-cut, it is more steep than Ngauruhoe, at any rate from Che Bay of Plenty side. There is a particularly fine view of its dramatic upswell froni the plain as you cross the Tarawera Itiver and go on towards Te Teko.

One evening, watching the sunset on Putauaki from the Rangitaiki riverside, I could picture the old mountain in eruption once more. The clouds that hung about its cup-like crater and its knife-like spurs glowed like the bloodred vapours reflecting the lava in a. burning mountain. It only needed a ehake and a Xgauruhoe-like roar every minute or two to make the illusion complete.

There is a well-known legend of | Taranaki's defeat in the battle of the mountains on the great central plateau •nd his flight to the West Coast, where he now lords it over the land as Mount Egmont. But not so well known is the fact—per Taupo folk-talk—that Mount Edgecumbe was also one of fair lady Pihanga's lovers until Tongariro evicted lim. Putauaki and Tauhara, that ancient volcanic cone standing alone on the pumice plain near Taupo, both loved Pihanga, and both were compelled to betake themselves elsewhere—Taranaki ■went west: Putauaki and Tauhara went north. "We shall go," they said, "to the sea which looks towards the rising of the sun"—the East Coast and the Bay of Plenty. But daylight, which stops all magic pilgrimages, found them still on the plain, and there they sat fast. Tauhara, forever casting longing looks back at the beautiful one he was leaving, did not get far. Putauaki outstripped him by fifty miles, but did not reach the coast, and so there he rests to this day, with no other mountain near to spoil his majestic aspect. About the base of Tauhara there are hot springs and boiling mud lakelets and fuming pits of sulphur to remind him of his own fiery past. Similr-rlv, Putauaki has its hot springs warming his feet, the boiling fountains in the fern at Te Onepu, not far from our motor road as we go down into tie plain from the forested hills abdvc Lake Rotoma. ■ * ■ •

It is not difficult for one who has hoard these old-native nature stories to enter into the spirit of the legend. All those bold, isolated mountains look alive, brooding, waiting. Cupped in the summit of Putauaki is a beautiful little lake, bordered by a forest of large totara Tirnu and kah'ikatea trees, nnd by raupon reeds, and paopao, or bullrushes. This forest attests the long period of the mountain's sleep. But was there not a forset on the. summit of Mount Tarawera? And was not Tarawera considered n quite extinct, perfectly harmless fellow until the gods of earthquake and fire aroused !him? Long slumber is not a guarantee that a volcano may not some day awake.

It is a sacred mountain, as T.iravera this lofty, sharp-ridged Edjpcumbe. On the very stimmit of the eastern peak (left angle as viewed from Te Teko) TnGTB 13 SL TT\ VSteriOUS rOFCr-- , OT chasm, an ancient volcanic fissure of great depth, which has for generations teen a tapu burial plnco of the Itaoris living on the plains below. There r.re the burial caves, all like the grc.it "torere" at the top of the peak cr.lled "The Door of Heaven." Once upon a time it was the gateway of some-thing the antithesis of heaven. Let's hope Putauaki may never become a second Ngauruhoe, however much the film men and the Press photographers would welcome it. But you never know!