Government is building a sanitarium at Sulphur Point, as it is called, situated about half a mile from the Lake House. The baths attached to it are supplied with water from springs which are highly charged with chemical matter, each being quite different from the others in its peculiar properties, and supposed to possess special curative powers. There is also here a hospital already in operation under the control of the Government, in which there were a score of patients when we visited it. Several of these were grateful and enthusiastic for the benefit they believed themselves to have experienced by bathing in the ill-smelling waters. Said one to us: "I now leave my crutches under my bed; but when I came here two weeks ago I could not walk across my room without them. Now, however, I walk a mile in the open air, forenoon and afternoon, without any help, and have a grand appetite, with the digestion of an ostrich."
A large town has been arranged for by the authorities in anticipation of the future popularity of these hot springs. Broad, regular, and well-laid out streets have been graded and fenced, having nicely gravelled road-beds, lined with ornamental trees; but there are yet no dwelling-houses here except the very comfortable Hospital structure. There is, however, a grocery store, a Post-Office, and a Town Hall,—these last two being of brick. It seemed to us that the atmosphere of Sulphur Point must always prove an insuperable objection to its being adopted as a permanent home. The constant odor rising from the subterraneous fires not only excites disgust, but is disagreeably suggestive of the nearness to active volcanic agencies. The Lake House is situated upon a gentle elevation, thirty or forty feet higher than the lake, and overlooking the lands all about it; but Sulphur Point is nearly on a level with the water, and is so low that any rise of the lake would inevitably flood it, and it must always be very damp.
Yet invalids have come all the way from the North of Europe to test the advantages of these springs, and, as we were assured by the attendant physician, with almost unvarying success. A railway is constructing from Oxford hither which will connect Ohinemutu with Auckland direct, obviating the necessity for staging, which no invalid should attempt unless the road is in a very different condition from that in which we found it. The railway will doubtless be finished within a twelvemonth.
One must start before sunrise from Ohinemutu in order to reach Auckland on the same day, though the distance is only a hundred and sixty miles, all but thirty of which is by railway. We have shown that the road between the Lake District and Oxford is one requiring time to deal with. When we left the Lake House, the silvery gray of the morning was struggling through the clouds of hot vapor and sulphurous steam which hung over and about the place. The stage lanterns and those in the hands of the attendants cast a weird and fitful glamour all about us. A dog was baying down among the Maori cabins, albeit the hamlet as a whole still slept. The horses brought out from their stable into the crisp morning air were a little restless, and a hostler held the bits of the two leaders. Presently the driver called out, "All right! let them go!" and in a moment more we were rolling smartly away by the borders of Lake Rotorua.
The extended programme was completed, and now our steps would be turned toward distant America.
No intelligent person can be blind to the favorable position of New Zealand or to the promise of its future commercial importance. Situated as it were in the centre of this Austral Ocean, the future highway of the world, it is accessible from all quarters. On the west, not far away, lie the busy harbors of Australia, with which her exchanges of merchandise are constant. Within easy reach of India and China on one side, she has California, Mexico, and South America on the other. To the north lie the hundreds of islands which constitute the groups of Polynesia, notable for their voluptuous climate and primitive fertility. With the opening of the Panama Canal or other available means for crossing the isthmus, New Zealand will lie directly in the highway between Europe and the gold-fields of the great island-continent,—between England and her largest colony. The insular position of the country does not necessarily indicate inaccessibility. The many beautiful islands of the South Sea must sooner or later come under the commercial sway of New Zealand, as they may be explored and civilized. Her admirable harbors, noble estuaries, and navigable rivers are elsewhere unsurpassed. If destined to achieve greatness, these islands, like those of great Britain, will do so through the development and maintenance of maritime power; and with so many advantages as they possess, we predict for them this final accomplishment.
As an attractive country to the explorer and traveller, though so many thousands of miles away from the beaten tracks, New Zealand is rendered accessible by the growing facilities of our times, and certainly combines within itself a grand variety of natural phenomena which nowhere else are so readily reached or more striking to behold. Her soil produces all the vegetation and fruits of the teeming tropics; and yet within a few hours' travel of flower-clad plains, one can ascend mountains as lofty, and behold glaciers as frigid and grand, as in Switzerland or Norway. While perennial verdure characterizes her valleys and plains, her lofty ranges are snow-capped all through the year. In the north she has geysers, boiling springs, heated caldrons, and active craters, as endless in variety as they are countless in number; in the south she has myriads of cool lakes which for beauty of scenery excel the Lake of Geneva, and for depth vie with the famous fjords of Scandinavia,—thus giving us an epitome of the grandest exhibitions of many lands. Her native race is unique, excelling nearly all others in originality, and full of interest to the ethnological student. In the wild Maori country the paths are among a wilderness of boiling waterspouts, and in the open districts of the lower country one is sheltered by fern-trees, tall, graceful, and picturesque. From the crests of burning mountains we may look into regions where sulphurous fires never cease, and by turning the eyes in another direction behold crystal waters tumbling over precipices hundreds of feet in height, to feed the streams which irrigate the fertile plains below.
These marvellous forests, precipitous gorges, lovely rivers, and fruitful valleys have neither legend nor history to lend them fortuitous attractions; but is it not quite as fascinating to tread such unworn lands, to make one's own path in the unbroken forest, and to be brought face to face with Nature in her primal condition? He who has become blasé with travel in Europe, or even in the less worn fields of Asia, may here encounter wonder upon wonder which will be sure to "whet his almost blunted appetite," and to renew in him all the early charms of foreign discovery and travel.