PAST ERUPTIONS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 226, 23 August 1945, Page 4

PAST ERUPTIONS

RUAPEHU AND TONGAItIRO. The estimate by Dr C. A. Cotton, Professor of Geology at Victoria University College, tnat it is about 00 years since there vyas any real activity on Alount Tongariro is reduced somewhat by Mr Herbert E. Rogers, of Coromandel, in a letter to the Auckland Herald describing an eruption which he witnessed in the ’nineties. “t was running sheep on the Alatapilii Block, between tne Whakapapa, or Haunted A\ hare, and the Wanganui River about 1895,” Air Rogers writes. “I bad come down with packhorscs for stores and was in the Tokaanu Hotel with a Government surveyor. Mr Biggs, who was in charge of a party surveying a track to the Ivetetahi Spring on Tongariro.

“All at once there was a terrific blast that shook the hotel like a rat in a terrier’s mouth. Alaoris outside began wailing, pointing to the mountain and calling. ‘Tongariro! Tongariro!’ We looked and saw a huge cloud rising from the mountain. it went up and up for many thousands of feet and then spread out like a cauliflower.

“I decided to return home and offered to ride up and see how the survey party was getting on. After crossing the Pihanga Saddle I met the first of them, and they told mo that one of tho party, Bob Banks, had gone back for a kitten and an alarm clock and they did not expect to see him again. ‘The only thing that saved us was that the blowout did not go straight up,’ one of them said. ‘lt went off at an angle away from us.’

“So I continued on inv journey and pre-i-cntly found a huge lump of rock, very hot, "lying beside the coach road. It must have "weighed about four tons. A little further on I met Bob Banks with lus kitten and clock. He said it had been a close call for all of them. Three now rifis had opened up just below the crater. I saw many more hot boulders and other material lying between the road and the mountain I heard later that the cloud of light-coloured dust had drifted over to Taranaki and whitened the blue uniforms of ships’ officers there. “Shortly after those events I moved my sheep to Western Bay, Lake Taupo. One morning, about the year 1898, I was talking to the Rev. NTx- Fletcher, of tho Prcsfavterian Maori Mission, neat- the lake outlet, when we heard a deep roar and felt earth tremors. We could see that Ruapehu was in eruption. I made a sketch, and Mr Fletcher secured a photograph showing the smoke pillar very clearly—it was four or five times the apparent height of the mountain. During tho three years I was at Matapihi there were several smaller outbursts on Ruapehu and the crater lake underwent various changes.”