THE QUARTER-CENTENARY OF THE TARAWERA ERUPTION.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 28 June 1911, Page 2

THE QUARTER-CENTENARY OF THE TARAWERA ERUPTION.

(By the Rev. T. W. New-bold. in "Olago Daily Times.")

On June- 10. 25 years ago. people at E-otoriuL (bought the .Judgment, <|ay had come. Soon after midnight, inky clouds began to brandish their thunderbolts and ethereal rente were torn from .horizon to horizon as lurid lightnings leaped from the bosom of the brassy sky. The lightning flash and the thunder's crash •were accompanied by earthquake i shocks, and a wild bm-ricano was howling for its prey. Rents l , too. were torn in the old Wairoa a«ad, where a huge fissure gapes like a long, deep grave. At 10 minutes past 2 the fierce, fiery fiend fought and forced its fearful passage through the frowning crest of Tarawera, and the volcano, long thought extinct, shot up columns of fire 500 ft wide, and 1000 ft high, ejecting 600.000,000 tons of matter, which covered' 570 square miles of the most wonderful sights in the world in a blanket of grey dust and winding-sheet of desolation. Some that night wer-e brave as Ajax, who stood and-laughed at the lightnings that nlayed around him, nor feared the liquid volcanic fires that threatened to sur round him. Though Nature has destroyed her loveliest birth, the place is "all alive" with new wonders., nor lias the legendary lore been altogether lost, as witness the tales the guides tell now of the "brain pot" at Whakarewarewa, which is the same story told of old among Tarawera's wonders. The writer was one of the last that saw the terraces, and has wandered since for many days about their legend-haauited places. One can never.forget the scenes that have gone, and which bewitched thousands of touristis, and which, if the photographei could ha\v> faithfully reproduced, would have miaide <him fortunes. The first evidence of the havoc wrought is seen at the road through the Tikitapu Bush. It was a veritable paa-adise. Feathery fringes of fronds and ferns fawned from the feet in that fern forest to fascinate one, and while passing over Nature's green and mossy carpet, and under the luxuriant overgrowth of surpassing loveliness there was much food for fancy found, and one almost expected to find some fairy queen leading, her tiny subjects forth to- dance around those forest ferns -and fragrant flowers for very glee. and as soon, as the sun stooped + " kiss the earth "good-night," and all Nature was hushed to repose :u.nder the dark wing of night, that enchanting bit' of busthscape was more lively.than ever. It was literally lit up like Alladin's cave. Thousands of living lanterns hung everywhere, as though the glow-worms lent their illumination for some fairy folks' festival. This "bush" was 'Stripped of its- beauty and most of its trees upheaved', though 12 miles from the Been© of eruption; and though 25 years have done what they could to restore sorhething of its pristine glory it has nothing of its old:-time charms, which were- wont to send every artistic soul •well-nigh •crazy with delight. Once through this bush another, scene was wont to greet the grateful gaze. There lay the Tikitapu Lake—not the cream-coloured chameleon it is now, but a blue expanse guarded by a' forest and fern-clad mountain range, and edged- on the Bide where the road skirted it with a silvery fringe of white pumice sand. A narrow strip of land divided this ".blue lake'' from, the green, very much larger, but 90ft -lower than its beautiful neighbour.- As one gazed upon these erstwhile samphire and emerald depths, and admired' «he mountain scenery so peacefully mirrored l in the water, one felt that if an artist could but cast those colours on his canvas people would deem the picture -too lovely to be real. A short distance brought one to the romantic and doomed village of Wairoa, where the hero Baimbridge was crushed beneath the falling veranda of M'Rae's Hotel. "Beautiful for situation" was that sequestered spot, nestling among the hills, with its waterfall, named •Maina in memory of a Maori maid who was carried! over it, and encircled in a fi-amework of Nature's own weaving, winding paths, [resembling the curves of beauty which Nature's landscape gardener makes everywhere, and - where wild •strawberries hid their blushes in the green. ■ "As one stood talking to the .Hazards in'; the sylvan shades oh the very spot where they were stricken down only a few weeks later, it seemed the very last place "Vhere destruction, d-is r tress, desolation; death, and dismay could possibly. remain supreme. The lake lay lit with the sun's limelight like a sheet of shining "steel for 12 miies. v In the holy hush of next morn's dawn we jumped on board the little pleasure boat with glee, and were pulled. down, the river, which glided like a snake into the lake, by eight swarthy natives, and. d-ran-king in the air like some delightful tonic, we were soon speeding merrily oyer a pathway as of burnished gold, which the sun now cast athwart that sheet of water- Ever-grim Tarawera lauched in the sunlight, and the steadfast _ blue of .the smiling sky seemed to bend in blessing over us like great shining wings of boundless protection. We called as was the tourists.' wont' for fruit and , crayfish at the village of Maura, which the eruption buried with its 29 inhabitants, and on to Te Ariki, where 50 Natives and on« European (who after a long absence with a survey, party had just returned) lie buried under 30 feet of lava. A short walk over n hill abounding in' sweet-scented white moss, and the vantage ground was reached, where the first view of the "White Terrace'-' burst upon the enraptured ( and wonder-heM vision. Was it an avalanche of show and iee sparkling in the sunlight which had- sapped down the mountain-side, mantling; square acres in a silvery cloud of white? No ! this could not be, for from that sweep of shining steps feathery clouds of steam arose. Irresistibly were we drawn, like the needle to the magnet, to this strange sight. Oh! the utter poverty of words —all were too feeble to describe this matchless veil of Nature's lacework or the delicate tracery of her buttressed staircase. A sense of the eternal' filled t*e soul. The gazers longed for quietude, angry! with the Natives 'chatter aTou-nd - them... Instinctively all hats were doffed, as we felt somehow we must I' surely be standing . before the Great j White Throne, and that the silicious water, leaping in foam from slab to .slab, must surely be the overflow of the

c 'iiv<T llio streams whereof make glad the City ■of Cod." All too soon (Ik; gui<l,< hurried us through a. weird 1 wood, whoso swaying branches oveirh'Uii.g tho terrace- as if in congratulation to shake hands uwr (his masterpiece of Nature's ha.ndiwork, and after cooking crayfish in a boiling .spring aikl' viewing geysers and " pon id.go-p<vts°' of mud spluttering iivi-r .slow linw a.nd deafening blowholes .and fumaToles- we were ferried o\'cr the warm bosom of Rotomahana. Lake by a copper-coloured Charon, who "padded his own canoe." and were placed at the foot of the Pink Terrace. This was a spectacle lor an angel's eye—a sight that might have filled with joy a seraph's heart. Up that fancy flight of shining stairs a white-i-obed angel might have trod in mystic beauty. One could only feel with Sir George Ar.ney as he crazed upon the scene: "It may be. seen, it may be wondered at, but it cannot be described-." There be those that say it was the waters of Roto.mohana Lake that burst into the workshops below, and. generating into steam, blew all the. surrounding grandeur into seething mud.