As morning broke, a dense pillar of ashes rose from the burning, roaring mountain; the school-house, where sixty Maori boys and girls used to be taught, was struck by lightning; and while burning, overwhelmed with torrents of hot mud and stones. Sad to say, the schoolmaster and most of his family were killed, the two eldest daughters only being rescued from the buried house. How well it is to know that Mr. Hazard and the four children who were taken out dead from the ruins, were ready, quite ready for whatever might happen, because they knew the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour!
God allowed them to lose their lives upon that dreadful day; but for them the eruption of the volcano was only the "chariot of fire" by which He was pleased to take them away in a moment, to be for ever with the Lord, who had loved them and given Himself for them.
The darkness caused by the ashes which fell in a ceaseless shower for eighteen hours, continued till noon the next day, when it was seen that not only had the beautiful marble terraces vanished, but the whole valley had been blown into the air by the tremendous force of imprisoned steam. A traveller describing the scene of desolation says,[Footnote: Miss Gordon Cumming on "The Eruption of Tarawera in 1885.">[ "Even living birds were coated with mud, while for some days after the eruption the poor bewildered cattle roamed about this dreary wilderness mad with hunger and thirst, gnawing boughs of trees or decayed wood, bellowing pitifully, and with eyes bloodshot and nostrils choked with greasy slate-coloured mud, which lay an inch thick all over their coats." And of the smiling valley itself, she says: "Where, but a few days previously, the wild fowl were swimming securely among the reeds and sedges which bordered the quiet lakes, there now exists only a chaotic wilderness of cones and craters all in hideous activity, ejecting clouds of pestilential black smoke and showers of stones. One large crater was in full action on the spot where the beautiful Pink Terrace had hitherto gladdened all visitors by its loveliness, and another apparently close to the White Terrace was throwing up masses of black dust and steam, which rose in columns thousands of feet in height."
There is a verse in the hundred and fourth Psalm which tells how God "touched the hills, and they smoke." There are many burning and smoking mountains in different parts of the world, besides those which have risen from the depths of the sea; some of them have destroyed whole cities by hot streams of lava or showers of ashes; there are some whose high peaks are covered with snow, and yet from those snowy heights the fire sometimes breaks forth; and there are others which are called extinct volcanoes, because the fire no longer breaks forth from them as it once did; but Mount Tarawera has taught us not to be too sure that a volcano which has been quiet for more than a hundred years is really extinct.
Hot springs, earthquakes, burning mountains, all tell the same tale: somewhere beneath the earth's surface there is a quantity of heated material, and these "convulsions of nature" which are so terrible in their effects come from the efforts made by it to escape from its prison. A friend who had been in a South American city during an earthquake told me of the terror-stricken feeling which he experienced when he ran out of the house in alarm, only to see buildings reeling and falling, and to feel the solid earth itself rocking beneath his feet, while from beneath came a rumbling noise, and a sound as of the clanking of chains. This trembling and rocking of the earth has led savage nations to speak of some monster underground turning his huge body. Shocks of earthquakes are occasionally felt in England, and in the north-west of Ireland sheets of lava show that volcanoes were once nearer home than we think. The Giants' Causeway, in the north of Ireland, and Fingal's Cave, in the Island of Staffa, off the north-west coast of Scotland, have been made by this lava having cooled and split up into beautifully formed columns, which look like stone pillars.
"BEAUTIFUL THINGS.
"What millions of beautiful things there must be
In this mighty world!—who could reckon them all!
The tossing, the foaming, the wide flowing sea,
And thousands of rivers that into it fall.
"Oh, there are the mountains, half covered with snow,
With tall and dark trees, like a girdle of green,
And waters that wind in the valleys below,
Or roar in the caverns too deep to be seen.
"Vast caves in the earth, full of wonderful things,
The bones of strange animals, jewels and spars;
Or far up in Iceland, the hot boiling springs,
Like fountains of feathers or showers of stars!
"Here spread the sweet meadows, with thousands of flowers;
Far away are old woods, that for ages remain;
Wild elephants sleep in the shade of their bowers,
Or troops of young antelopes traverse the plain.