THE SULPHUR SPRINGS OF OHAEAWAL BAY OF ISLANDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6362, 8 April 1882, Page 6

THE SULPHUR SPRINGS OF OHAEAWAL BAY OF ISLANDS.

[IIV ASMl>l)Kl'S.l

Tiik sulphur springs of Ohae.vwai are considered, by all who know them, to be the liuest medicinal springs in .New Zealand ; though they are not very attractive to bathers, for they are muddy and uninviting ; or to drinkers, for they arc also ovil-.smcll-iug ; nor yet to tourists, for thosuiTOiindings cannot by any means be called picturesque. They consist of three or four warm, two or three hot, half-a-dozen tepid, and of innumerable cold springs ; some mere bubble springs, and others (both hot and cold) apparently boiliiu' furiously out of the ground, and running in small rivulets to a main stream leading to the lake that receives all the overflow. There are also one or two springs that throw up shining globules of pure quicksilver.

The whole are situated in an open gully, surrounded by low hills covered with fern or toa-treo scrub ; tin; bed of the gully lias apparently been undermined by tin: springs constantly throwing up white sulphureous mud, which is washed away by the water, and bin caused the ground to subside gradually in irregular openings along the course of the gully ; openings which mark the various clusters of springs, and, ranging from a quarter- ;>cre to throe acres in extent, o.ten !i» a chain for over half-a-mile. They strongly resemble a sea beach, having miniature dill's all round them ; while the floor is composed of smooth, hard sand, dotted with pebbles, and traversed by ironstone reefs, with here and there a patch of yellow sulphur etllorcscencc ; tho whole being bleached white by sulplmr fumes, except where the rusty yellow of an ironstone reef crops out and stains tlie sand around it. In the centre of each opening there arc from one to four curiously shaped eminences, pure white, seamed and scarred into miniature ravines, just like microscopic duplicates of Mount Cook, or Mount Kgmoiit, and ranging from ten to thirty feet high. They mark tlie original level of the ground, before the subsidence had left them standing on these miniature plains. Some of them have huge bleached kauri roots on the top, sticking out Horizontally like horns for many loot, .shewing that the ground was formerly covered with gaint pines ; while others have two or three sturdy, scrubby manuka trees growing on the top, remnants of the former vegetation, and totally without any undergrowth, not even a blade of grass ; the stems of these trees, starting bare out of the bare white ground, having a very curious etloet. This ctieet is further heightened by tlie dense scrub and fern, which come down to the edge of the miniature dill's, all round tlie openings, and then suddenly ami sharply cease, as if the openings had been scooped out by sonic titanic knife, and then floored with white concrete.

The first opening at tho head of the gully is about half a mile from the Sulphur Lake, and contains only cold springs, heavily impregnated with sulphur. Following tlie out/low, on the hard sand borders of a narrow stream, with the scrub meeting over it in places, the visitor comes to a larger opening ; that loads to a still larger one,'followed by another narrow stream leading to other openings, each progressively increasinu in siz'3 till the lake is reached. Along" the course of this main stream there occur places where seemingly solid and hard surfaces prove to be mud holes, or quicksands, in which the unwary pedestrian sinks up to his knees, but the bed is mostly hard and firm. The springs occur in groups in the openings, and a small stream from each spring meanders about till it joins the main stream; while abng the whole courses, both of the main stream and the rillets, or feeders, there is a continuous lino of sulphuretted air bubbles coming up out of small holes like sand worm casts, and much resembling soap bubbles.

Some of the main springs quietly well up out of the ground ; others rise in circular basins, witli ebullitions much resembling water boiling furiously : some are quiescent pro/.'»/., and are of a beautiful blue colour, while tlie active ones are a muddy white ; the whole being so strongly impregnated with sulphur as to be smelt several miles across the country in the direction of the wind, .and leaving the smell of sulphur on the body and clothes fur several days, nay, the very pipe of the writer tasted of sulphur for several days after his visit. The nearer these (springs approach tin: lake, the liottur they become, till the last two, on the very edge of the lake, are nearly boiling hot; the bather can therefore cool these springs by letting in water from tlic lake, and then he can wash oil' the sulphurous mini, with which he will be encrusted, by a swim in the clear lake alongside. The lake is a circular basin of groat depth, and about live acres or thereabouts in extent, muchly resembling the funnel of a iiuge mud volcano. It is surrounded on two sides by a fine hard beach or margin ; and at the far end the low fevn hills sharply recede, forming the outlet of the lake ; the water is highly impregnated with sulphur, and sulphur hubbies ooxe up all round the margin, both in ami out of the lake. There w.is nothing peculiar in the surrounding vegetation, which consisted of t:atree scrub, fern, and cutty grass, witli a little stunted llax ; but that side which was exposed, by the prevailing wind, to an extra dose of sulphur fumes had assumed a peculiar bronze tint for some distance back from the springs. Few people have any idea ot the vast extent of volcanic lan.! that exists in the inland districts of the ll.iy of Islands, extending for many miles in every direction, in the shape of rich level plateaus dotted with volcanic cones. One of tliu.se plateaus extends (o Ohaeawai, and for miles beyond ; but the road from Ohaeawai to the springs is over low hilli, covered with stunted scrub and fern, and .s merely a wretchuil, wriggling clay track, passing over very poor kauri gum land for about one mile. Indeed, nothing strikes the visitor more strongly than the utter absence of the slightest attempt to render the springs accessible, or even to construct a bath, for, as they are at present, they are only shallow holes or basins a few inches deep. Let us hope that these remarkable springs may be better utili/.ed hereafter than they have been heretofore ; for their ellicacy in rheumatic, scrofulous, and skin diseases is undoubted and wonderful ; and they range from eold to hot, from clear to muddy, and from moderately sulphureous to .snlloeatingly so ; and therefore all classes of patients can be treated according to their constitution or their ailments, and can have cither a sulphur, a sit/., or a mercurial bath.