OUR VOLCANIC REGION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1649, 7 October 1903, Page 8

OUR VOLCANIC REGION.

the great ERUPTION OF 1886. INTERESTING "REMINISCENCES. The recent said disaster at the Waimangu geyser and the theory since advanced by 'the “Bay of Plenty Times” that there is danger of a great volcanic outburst taking place in the Hot Lake district, owing to the great increase of the volume of waiter* in Lake Rotoma,Laita, has reawakened interest in the tremendous eruption oi Mount- Tarawera that took place over seventeen years ago. A well-known gentleman, r who was an. eye-witness of the appalling scenes that immediately followed tho disastrous volcanic outburst of Mt. Tarawera, has kindly sent up a graphic account of his experiences at that time, from which the foilowmg is extracted: Reaching Lake House alt Rotorua, I found the place nearly deserted. It had been marvellously preserved from destruction in the “debacle” of volcanic mud and ashes that covered tho district generally by the violent south wind tha,t set in during the eruption, and carried tho ejecta northwards. Only a spare© sprinkling of volcanic dust of slatey hue covered' the ground. Tho scenes of the past three clays, tho constant earthquakes, and outbreaks of hot-springs in the streets had caused a general exodus. Mrs Graham, the wellknown proprietress of the hotel mentioned, and a few other bravo spirits, however, still remained. I found the eldest son of Sir Frederick Whitaker there. He, I, and a few others, who formed what might he termed the Auckland relief-party, after applying in vain for. assistance to the Government of the day, formed a boat party, with a view to searching the-shores of lake Tarawera. A native village, Te Ariki, was the objective where we hoped (in vain as it proved), to find means of rescuing some, at least, of the inhabitants —some 95 natives, and ten Europeans. Tho actual boat party consisted of Messrs Edwin Harrow, Black, Sergeant Gahil, another European, and the two well-known half-caste guides and footballers, Warbrick by name. Mr Harrow, wi'oh benevolent energy, in order to save the time that might be lost by getting up a subscription, bought the boat and paid all expenses. This boat was put on a waggon, and was 'Mims conveyed from Rotorua, through the one-time fairyland of Tikitapu bush, now a tumbled, mud-encrusted entanglement of wind-uprooted vegetable debris, innocent of road, and deep with mud and slime. This work was negotiated in tho dark of a frosty night, and boat and waggon, after being often upset and remounted, and repaired by candlelight, at length reached Wairoa. Alas! what a view there met o;ur eyes! Instead of the “pleasant vale,” with its neat native houses and hotel, that we remembered, winding its “emerald way” down to the blue and sparkling waters of the lake, we found a valley of desolation and death ! Mud covered all. Mud, from ten ‘la fifteen feet deep in places, through which the grim, disarticulated limbs of forest growths, and ruined portions of the once pretty little missionary church, and other buildings, raised their skeleton ugliness lao the grey sky above. The one-time wooded slopes of the valley-basin were now occupied by dangerous avalanches of wet mud, which came rushing downwards aic intervals, threatening to overwhelm the party. In front, miles away across the slimy, quaking hills, gigantic opalescent pillars of steam rolled majestically into the heavens; and a pulsating, earsplitting roar of mighty steam jets echoei'l up the wet sides of the glen, which quivered with ever-recurring earth-tremors. Wo found a few men from Rotorua (including Robertson, the plucky coach proprietor, wlxo led the relief party to Wairoa, Macrae, who was afterwards awarded the gold medal of the St. John Ambulance Association for saving life on this occasion, and an ar l i sco r resp o nflent ol the ‘'lllustrated London News). They had not long found the body of a young English tourist named Bainbridge, who was killed on the night of the eruption by the verandah falling upon him. Some blinded draught- horses belonging to a carrier named Bird stood bacitdeep in mud and scoria ash, where they had been feeding. As the - volcanic ejeoca fell upon and around them they trampled it underfoot, and so' rose with it, alive but burnt, and all, I think, blinded.

' The party attempted to get- some sleep, after dragging the boat down to the lake, which, took nearly all day, in the only budding that remained, the old guide -Sophia’s whare: An entrance to this hut had been scraped, through its clammy coverlid of argillaceous deposit. But sleep was out- of the question, even dead tired as we were. .Every o'cher minute it seemed as if the whole universe was about- to bo shaken to fragments and collapse; and the stafunch old builjding creaked and groaned about and above us like a restive basket-chair. Down below, frc-m the lake, came thethunders of mud-slides rushing into the turgid waters. An attempt to camp outside, on the mud, now covered with flaky ico crystals, met with no better success, as no fire could be obtained—everything being wet. Above all, the two bottles of “medical comforts” had

unacotuntably gone astray ! How a “wee ffirap” would have gone then! The “sma/ ” hours of the morning saw us waist-deep in mud, attempting to launch the boat—sliding it down the muddy slopes. But cur vessel had been injured, in its passage, and a delay occurred. So-, whilst the Warbricks were repairing it, we joined ,a party consisting of Messrs Vogan, Edwards (of the Half-way House) and another European, who had located the wharo of an old tohunga-, or native priest, named Tuho'cu. None of the natives about-, even, the half-castes, would go near the place. TuhiOtu had a bad reputation, and was supposed to have cursed the children of the neighbouring village with measles the previous year, as a punishment for his having been neglected by the natives. A slight depression in the mud alone showed where <the object of our search lay hidden. Two hours or more of hard digging, constantly interrupted by encroachments of mud from the mud “slides” that hung over us on either hand, brought us to the raupo roof. A hole was soon made. Almost- immediately, as the fresh air entered, a- voice rose from it, in startling accents, “Ekoru!” The old fellow —reputed to he over a, century old —was then alive, after having been buried for* over four days. It was, indeed, “a voice from tho grave.” An entrance was finally effected by Vogan from the front of the whare ; and his recessional, towing grimy old mummy-like “prophet” after him, took place. Apparently the roof•ridige, in falling, had left a space under uvhich the old hoy had “hibernated” till discovered. Sitting on the knees of one of tho party, old Tuhotu began to address us in a low, unearthly kind of voice, in old Maori, which Edwards alone was able to comprehend. “You arc spirits,” he said. “I see you are spirits!” He thought he had died, and was now in anew world. All was entirely changed. He did not recognise his surroundings, “as in a glass dimly,” he mistook, evidently, our avocations and personalities, in a manner, too, flattering to- our self-esteem. Muddied, miserable and unkempt as we were, we hardly looked •human, I can quite believe. Old Tuhotu was finally regaled with, a smoke, and afterwards with some condensed milk and biscuit from che ruins of Macrae’s hotel hard by. Afterwards, taken in'to Rotorua, and cleansed (he was highly animated with pediculoe), he < protested, in vain, of being shorn of his lank a lid frowsy locks, saying lie would die if tins were done. Sure enough, die he did, shortly after this necessary “amputation” had been effected. On his journey to Rotorua he .recovered himself sufficiently to inform his hearers thac he had himself caused the eruption in order to punish the local Maoris for their neglect to supply him with food, and for their general backsliding from the old faiths that brought him the perquisites by which lie lived. Those remarkable “words in due season” were, as Disraeli used to say, “characteristic of the individual.”

The boat party now started; constant baling being necessary, whilst another party —Vogan and others —crossed the hills, and were the first to 1 view the site of the old Terraces and Rotcmahana-, and to report the destruction of these chef cVoeuvres of nature’s handiwork. The boat party finally reached Te Ariki, many miles down the lake, finding on the way some natives, who had come from the east by way of the Kaituna river. Te Ariki. village had disappeared under some sixty feet- of mud, and an attempt- by some of the party to gdc a view of the main crater cf Tarawera was frustrated by the heat of the mud and the menacing aspect of matters generally. A re’c-urn was, therefore, made, and only just in time, as one of the recurring lesser eruptions took place shortly after the party left the shore, and covered their late landing place with hot slcon.es ancl mud. Some of the ejecta even fell around! the boat. In itlie dark, a mistake was made when reaching the Wairoa, end of the lake, and great difficulty was experienced in getting to a place of safety. Having to wajde waist-deep through, the adhesive mud, which necessitated the removal of the clothing of the lower {units, was too much for some of the party after their exertions, and the Europeans nearly succumbed. All clothing fell to pieces a few days after the trip, by reason of some acid in the mud, and several of the paiAy suffered from severe cutaneous troubles from the same reason. The death-roll of the eruption was about 100 natives and a dozen Europeans, but indirectly very many deaths followed from exposure, and at least three persons went insane from the terrors of that night of Juno 10,1886. One of the saddest sights were the numbers of blinded horses and cattle starving to death in inaccessible places, and the hundreds of dead bodies of tui ituis, pigeons and other birds that lay about in the mud.