Next day we went to see the terraces—the hub of Wonderland. Our guide was a Maori called Sophia. Sophia and Kate are historical characters in Wonderland, and everybody who visits this district passes through the hands of one of these ladies.
Kate, who is decorated with a medal for having saved life—I think it was the life of a bishop—was away on her twenty-fifth honeymoon, so we fell into the arms of Sophia. Sophia is a big woman, and it would be a big man who ever escaped should he ever fall into her arms. I don’t know her age, but I should guess it at being about forty-five.
Although Sophia is masculine, she speaks English with the affectation of a well-bred duchess. She is always merry, and has a twinkle in her eye, indicating that she is continually on the qui vive for fun. She wore a short dress like a Welshwoman, black stockings, and buckled shoes.
From the hotel we walked a mile or so down to the lake, where we all embarked in a whale-boat. Here we had a row of a mile and a half down a river-like arm of the lake before we were fairly launched in the lake itself. Before us were the rugged rocky heights of Mount Tarawera, a volcano after which the lake is named. On the opposite side of the lake there are hills covered with trees.
It was a pull of nearly eight miles against a stiff breeze, before we came to the top of the lake. On the way we made one stoppage. This was to interview a fisherman in a dug-out. Sophia told us that to buy craw-fish from the fishermen of Tarawera was the correct thing, and as we could not oppose the wishes of a lady, we stopped. Luckily the fisherman had not caught any craw-fish. We were very cold and a little wet when we reached the head of the lake.
A walk of a mile and a half up the banks of a small creek, which was in many places steaming, and we were on the shores of Lake Rotomahana and at the foot of the White Terrace. At a distance the terrace looked like one side of a pyramid which had been made by piling together rows of white wash-hand basins.
Another comparison is to liken it to a huge white marble staircase on the side of a hill, each step being rounded in front and hollowed out above. These steps, or wash-hand basins, are from one foot to twelve feet in height, and they are all filled with water, which is hotter and hotter the higher you ascend. At the top there is one large basin filled with water that is boiling. When the wind is in a certain direction (north-east, Sophia said), this may be entirely empty.
When we saw it, it was twenty feet or so in depth, and overflowing. The water was running down from basin to basin, getting cooler and cooler and depositing silica as it descended. One exceedingly striking point connected with the marble-like basins of limpid water is that the water appears to be of a brilliant light-blue colour—so blue that it often looks unnatural.
The pool at the top looks like a crater that had been breached on one side, and from the breach a lava stream had descended to the lake. The terraced arrangements of basins have been built on the lava stream. In many places, especially at the foot of the terraces, you could see basins in the process of formation. As a stream of water flows over an inclined surface, it spreads out to form a fan-like film.
At a certain distance from its origin it has become sufficiently cooled to deposit the silica which, while hot, it holds in solution. The deposition takes place on a curved ridge, the curvature of which corresponds to the curvature of the flowing fan-like film of water. In time the ridge grows higher and higher, until finally it becomes a basin in which water does not cool so rapidly as it did when the formation commenced.