parsley fern to sturdy oak and feathery Prince of Wales, grew out of the many-hued mosses at their feet, and creepers twined lovingly round their trunks and hung from their branches in graceful confusion. We drove for some twenty minutes through this little bush garden, and as we emerged from it, before us lay a lake that looked as if it had been dropped from a summer sky, a lake of celestial blue so pure and perfect, so radiantly heavenly, that the greatest artist in the world could not possibly do justice to it. Our road skirted it, and we watched, as we drove, its changing shades where the water was deeper or more shallow,—sometimes sky-blue, sometimes, and this near the white Leach, turquoise, but always blue, delicately, exquisitely, daintily blue.
Then the road climbed a saddle of the hill and we turned for a last look. And then a sudden exclamation from Captain Greendays, who was sitting in front with the driver, made us look ahead again, and there, wonder of wonders, at the foot of the other side of the saddle was another lake, but green this time, green as the first was blue. The distance between them was insignificant, only the shoulder of the hill separated them, yet on one side was the forget-me-not, on the other its leaves.
We drove for some minutes on the shores of the second lake before crossing a stream on the edge of the village of Wairoa.
The village! All that is left of it are a few poor remnants of wooden houses and some scraps of machinery and farming implements. Only the cherry and acacia trees which have planted themselves from the seeds, or grown from the old roots, distinguish the site of the village from any other part of the bush left unscathed by that fiendish eruption. Beyond that little oasis there is desolation in every direction,—the hills and valleys all grey and ghastly, one vast charnel-house of plants and earth as well as humanity, and the cherry and acacia trees are like the requiem of the departed souls.
The existence on the ground of a peddling photographer’s tent and some refreshment houses seemed sacrilegious, but nevertheless we made an early luncheon there before going down to Lake Tarawera to the motor-launch in readiness to convey us across.
The beach of the lake is a mere cinder-heap, and the hills encircling it so covered with these same cinders that they look like the sides of an ash-pit.
At the other side of the lake we left the launch and ploughed our way up a hill of lava and more cinders which lay between us and Lake Rotomahana. The descent of this hill was even worse than the climb up, for the loose pumice and cinders gave no solid footing. I grew tired of sinking to my shins at every step, and ran, but even then the rubbly stuff was so light that I sank to the ankles at every footfall, and was greatly in danger of falling headlong. It was fortunate that we were wearing stout tan shoes, for the worst ordeal was still to come.
The bottom of Lake Rotomahana was blown bodily out on the night of the eruption, and the rain of mud and stones that smothered Wairoa is supposed to
