THE LOST TERRACES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11872, 25 January 1902, Page 4

THE LOST TERRACES.

There seems great unwillingness oi the part of many people in New Zea land to believe that the wonderfu White and Pink Terraces of Roto mahana were destroyed by the. erup tion of 1886. The wish is probabl; to some extent the father to th< thought. It seems almost shockin; to all who are admirers of natun and who looked upon these terrace as amongst the great treasures an( possessions of the race, as some thing vouchsafed to us by the Creato as stimulants of our feelings o wonder and reverence, that the: should be blown up and destroyec in a moment of time after having taken :■ perhaps hundreds of thou sands of years to form, and just whei they were becoming accessible to th< world. ■ There is not much in this however. Nature takes not th( slightest account of man. A village was destroyed by the eruption, wit! all its inhabitants, and if Auckland had stood there it would have gone Herculaneum and Pompeii met then fate, and probably they were not ex : ceptionally wicked as cities were it those times. We lately published z letter from a gentleman at Nelson, who has apparently given much attention to the subject, tind to-daj we print in our Supplement an article from "A Recent Visitor," setting forth the grounds on which it is believed that the terraces are .still there, covered with a deposit of mud which could be sluiced away.. There can be no question of 'the benefit which it would be to the colony if it were found that these unique creations could again be displayed to the world. Well, there is no reason whatever .why the suggestion thai they are still. there should not be tested. That could be done at a very reasonable cost. The original positions of the terraces could easily be fixed.' If in this matter a local committee were formed we are quite sure that the Government would assist, because the whole of New Zealand would greatly benefit if they could be made once more an attraction to the world.