Many visitors have written a description of these wonders. One man, who describes the place in blank verse, speaks of the waters as a ‘lithic lymph.’ But about all this I will speak more fully in my Guide-book to New Zealand.
Another man, struck by the quantity of steam, the pits, the bubbling and snorting, the ponds of steaming mud, and the sulphurous burning hillsides, entitled his description ‘An Introduction to the Devil; or, The Vestibule of Hell.’ I could not get a copy of his work.
The activity is continually shifting. One day you find a steam-hole in the scrub, and next day it has gone. Some of these holes are big enough to receive a bullock, and we were told the story of a herd of bullocks falling into a hole, and their coming up out of another about a mile distant from the place where they had disappeared. The subterranean activity of Wonderland is a kind of public works which are difficult to inspect. Mac said he would not live there at any price; he was afraid the whole thing might blow up.
On our way back Sophia gave us a lot of information about the terraces and their visitors. Several American speculators had from time to time paid Rotomahana a visit.
One old gentleman, who had a craze for natural phenomena, tried to buy up the terraces; what he wanted to do with them we never properly learned. One idea was that he was going to cut them up in sections, and then ship them to New York; another idea was that he intended to light them up with the electric light, and show them through variously coloured glasses to visitors; a third notion was that he intended to convert the heat into electricity, and send it down by wire to Auckland; but what the old man really wanted was never known.
‘What did he offer for your Wonderland, Sophia?’ asked Mac.
‘He offered us a yearly rental of five shillings, or £10 down.’
We reached Ohinemutu on Saturday afternoon. In the evening we paid a shilling to get entrance to a Maori dance, which was going on in a shed opposite the hotel.
There were a great many persons present—half-whites, and half-Maoris. I reckon the half-castes, some of whom were very pretty, in with the Maoris. The ladies sat in benches round the sides of the room. Five or six of these ladies were white. Many of the Maori girls, who were dressed in European dresses, with French boots and plaited pig-tails, spoiled their appearance by having tattooed lips.
The music, consisting of a concertina, at length commenced, and a young Englishman, desirous of dancing with a live Maori, asked a young lady for the pleasure of her hand.