strains against the rock, and pushing down the intervening waters with its broad, strong back, forces them below the level of the funnel, and dispersing part, and driving part before it, rushes forth in triumph to the upper air. The fountains, therefore, that we see mounting to the sky during an eruption are nothing but the superincumbent mass of waters in the pipe, driven into confusion before the steam at the moment it obtains its liberation."

THE ROTO-MAHANA, THE BOILING LAKE OF NEW ZEALAND.

AT the very antipodes of Iceland there rises from the depths of the Pacific Ocean a long slip of land, divided

into three islands of unequal size. These islands constitute New Zealand, a country. as remarkable for the extent and richness of its soil as for the mildness of its climate and the variety of its landscapes. Isolated, or beautifully clustered together, are numerous mountains, plains, woods, and waters.

Well, this privileged land presents more than one feature in common with poor and distant Iceland. Its surface, like that of the island in the arctic regions, -whence it is separated by the entire diameter of the globe, is the permanent theatre of the action of the interior of our planet upon its external crust. The same power which raised New Zealand above the ocean still shakes her foundations. There are few regions more constantly agitated by earthquakes than the shores of Cook's Straits, which separate the two greatest islands of the archipelago. The northern island, the most rich and populous, is traversed in its entire length N.E. to S.E., for a distance of seventeen miles, by a volcanic zone, studded with fiery hills, from 2000 to 3000 yards in height, many of which still groan and fume, with sulphur-pits and smoky excrescences, lakes of warm water and warm springs, recalling the geysers of Iceland. At its northern extremity the zone spreads itself around Plenty Bay, of which it forms the shores, and where it acquires the name of the lake district, on account of the multitude of basins of all sizes which dot its surface. It is the part of the island least coveted by colonists, but the most frequently visited by travellers and by mere tourists, who

198

THE BOILING LAKE.

pass by Auckland, the capital of the archipelago. There are few of the good citizens of that town, unfamiliar as they are with life in the bush, who do not face the fatigue of a journey of some days' duration across forests and swamps, in order to behold the wonders of Roto-Mahana, or the Boiling Lake.

This sheet of water, one of the smallest of the group of which it forms a part, lies to the south of the district, at the foot of the heights which separate the waters flowing into Plenty Bay from those tributaries of the great Taupo Lake and the river Waikato, its outlet, which are carried to the opposite coast of the island.

At first sight, this little lake, which is 1532 yards long and 383 broad, spreading a green liquid between a double bank of marshes and barren hills, speckled here and there with patches of fern, answers but badly to the idea which might be formed from its renown. But as soon as the traveller has penetrated the melancholy area, filled with thick columns of white vapour issuing from every crack and aperture in the surrounding earth, and every ravine which intersects it, he at once guesses what has rendered this locality one of the most remarkable in our planet. As the ascending clouds cannot proceed from the hearths of human beings, nor from the charcoal fires which abound in the forests of Europe, they are justly concluded to be the exhalations of innumerable geysers, salt pits, and warm springs, which have imparted to the Roto-Mahana its temperature and its name.