LAKES AND OUTLETS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 57, 9 March 1931, Page 6

LAKES AND OUTLETS.

Recent reports concerning the alteration in the level of Lake Okataina, and the theory tha t underground channels have been opened up, ?>o causing the level to fall, prompt some reference to one remarkable feature of many of the lakaes in the Rotorua region. Only four of the lakies have visible outlets. From the others, what o at-, flow there is must escape by subterranean strea ms or seepage. There are eight lakes within a shoit distance of Rotorua which come within t Lis category, namely, Okataina, Okareka, Rotoi shu, Rotoma, Rotokawau, Tikitapu, Rotomahana, and Rerewhakaitu> In the case of Rotomahana, the olden outlet, the Kaiwaka Stream, was bloc iked up and the neck of land between the warm lake and Tarawera deeply buried by the Tara\ rera eruption, but it is evident that the surplus wa iers soak through the soft pumice and ash to Ijake Tarawera, otherwise Rotomahana would lmve overflowed the isthmus long ago. Okataina. is different; there is no known ancient outlet, 2 nd the theory as to a subterranean channel must hold good. Okataina is much nearer to Luke Tarawera than to Rotoiti, but it is likely enough that the way of discharge is through 'the volcanic country —covered with a beautiful fonest —to the latter lake, which is at a consideral jly lower level. Rotoiti itself, though it has a strong river, the Kaituna, running out of its northwestern end, is not content with the visible oi itlet; it has a subterranean way of discharge also. This is near the eastern end, where the waiter is very deep under the high cliffs, and where a whirlpool has sometimes been obsrved. On ihe other side of the narrow range, at Pariwhai'ti, tlie source of the Pongakawa River bursts from fissures in the cliff, and this is evidently a subterranean fountain from Rotoiti.

A similar deep-down outlet carries off Rotoehu's waters in the same direction. Tt his viewless river, making its way through the underworld, lias its source in the deep northern arm of Rotoehu, a bay called Kopua. There is a singular local legend" about this place. It wis in old times the burial place of the Ngati-Makii 10 tribe. The bodies of the dead were taken 01 it into the middle of the bay, where the water .is deep and black, and were dropped from til e Maori Charon's tapu canoe into the depths, to - gether with greenstone jewels and other trea - sures of the dead. The bodies needed no weights:; the spirit of the lake would draw them down t<» itself, say the Maoris. The ghosts of generations haunt the mystic forest-shadowed Kopua; and the ancient canoe used by the tribal sexton was still to be seen hauled up on the lakeside there when first I went to Rotoehu. This belief in the body-snatching spirit of the lake is obvi-1 ously based on the existence of a strong sub-1 terranean outflow. |

Rotoma, that most beautiful of forest-girt lakes is 00ft or 70ft higher than Rotoehu, and there is no doubt an underground run-off of its waters; the two lakes approach each other very closely. Considerable fluctuation in the level of Rotoma lias been noticed from time to time, and the fall of the waters has disclosed the remains of ancient islanded forts. Then, nearer Rotorua, there are legend-haunted Tikitapu and that secluded and pretty lake Okareka. The Maoris say that there is a subterranean passage between Tikitapu and Roto-Kakahi, and they embroider this statement—no doubt a fact—with a tale about a faniwha in the form an enchanted log which used to make its way from one lake to the other by the hidden channel through the rocks. As for Okareka, there is a well-known . connection between it and Tarawera, by the subterranean little river which bursts out on the nearest part of the latter lake, about a mile away. Most curious of all these lakes of ours, where waters have to creep out through "caverns measureless to man," is Rotokawau, that round blue eye of a lake pent in between high cliffs, near the road to Tikitere. Its source and the way of discharge are both hidden. Subterranean springs, no doubt, supply it, and it is most likely that there is a secret river finding its way out through a fissure in the volcanic rocks under the dark cliff 011 its north-east side. This river makes a way out into Rotoiti; it comes to light near Tapuaekura, a bay about half-way down the southern shore of that lake. Those who have seen the strong fountain-rivers Hamurana and Awahou and the Fairy Spring welling up in the Rotorua lake country can easily imagine that the whole of this volcanic region is reticulated with such streams either feeding lakes or carrying awav their waters. • _j q j

THE ACCOMPANIST. (By J.H.) , r^'l 1 c , accompaniments were sympathetically plajetl by Mr. Thomas Korroway, A.lt A M on a concert grand .piano kindly lent "by the Lyre and Lyric Company. I had been at the concert the night before, had noted the finished work of Thomas Korroway, and left the hall convinced that but for his effort much of the music, both vocal and instrumental, would have left the audience cold. Yet here we had it —"the accompaniments were sympathetically played"—five words at the end of a concert critique over the best part of a column. Who was the musician of the evening? I thought of Thomas Korroway as with infinite patience he had given those vocalists "just a run over, you know," as a preliminary to fit them for the platform and help them —and only them earn the plaudits of the house. I thought of ihomas Korroway as with nimble fingers on that concert grand he had formed the musical bond linking the other instruments into one grand whole. I thought of him as he juggled with handfuls of tones while each of the other players found one. I listened as the prelude and interlude called for more skill than was shown throughout a whole number by any of the singers for whom "the accompaniments were sympathetically played." True to the smallest semi-demi-quaver of time, balanced to a nicety with his crescendoes and diininuendoes, sensing as with a twin brain the mood of a singer of either sex, portraying with equal perfection the trickling of a streamlet and the booming of a thunderclap, Thomas Korroway, A.R.A.M., had received from the musical journal five words of commendation to the effect that "the accompaniments were sympathetically played."

"Damned with faint praise"—that's the fate too often assigned to the Thomas Korroways of our concert halls. How came those initial letters, A.R.A.M., to follow the name of this man who "sympathetically played"? Probably by more study, more artistic insight, more persistent effort than could be boasted by the entire bunch o 1 vocalists for whose benefit he "sympathetically played." Did the singers—did the public—did the literary critic think of the years of daily study involved to make true the statement that "the accompaniments were sympathetically played"? Did they notice how a boy's games were interrupted six days a week with the maternal query, "Tommy, have you done your practice?" Did they note the puckered brow as ten little digits tried to find music in the "five-finger exercises"? Did they catch the pathos of Tommy's treble as he counted the interminable "One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four" —with a specially loud quality in the "One"? Did they follow him through his "rudiments" and each succeeding stage until he could master a score that seemed to the layman more black than white, clutching half a dozen notes here, two there, eight or ten somewhere else, during a fraction of a second, rippling up and down that keyboard with bewildering speed and unerring accuracy until in the grand finale he set the ears a-tingle with ail atmosphere surcharged with harmony?

I did. And that is why I still am wordering how musical critics who can write over half a column about a singer's work can afford to the accompanist no higher paean than that "the accompaniments were sympathetically played."