THE TABU REMOVED.
"Sight-seeing places the world over are the cause of great demoralization to the people that live near them, and the Hot Lake district of New Zealand is no exception. The Maoris here are as rapacious as the hackmen at Niagara Falls, the guides and hotel-keepers at Rome, Naples, and hundreds of other places on the Continent, or the custodians of the Taj Mahal at Agra, or the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. Every step we take has a fee of some kind attached to it, and they have even established a charge of five pounds (twenty-five dollars) for the privilege of taking photographs in the Hot Lake district. Miss Cumming, who wrote "At Home in Fiji" and other interesting books, tells how they tried to make her pay the photograph fee for taking sketches of the White Terraces and other curiosities during her visit. She resisted on the ground that a sketch was not a photograph; but they refused to listen to her excuses, and threatened to destroy her sketches unless she paid the sum demanded. She managed, however, to smuggle them away by concealing the sketches among some rugs, and leaving the district under the escort of a large party of English tourists.
MAORI VILLAGE OF WAIROA, IN THE HOT LAKE DISTRICT.
"Wairoa is a pretty village with some two or three hundred inhabitants, most of them Maoris, and has a church, a school-house, and two hotels for the accommodation of tourists. The church and school are less prosperous than they used to be, as the natives are not as zealous in Christianity as when they were first converted. Soon after the Maori war broke out they hanged one of their pastors, and compelled another to flee to avoid the same fate.[7]
"We were comfortably lodged at one of the hotels, and the next morning took the coach for Tauranga, rejecting the advice of several persons who told us we should not fail to see Lake Taupo and Mount Tongariro. The country is desolate, and the most that can be said of it, so far as we could learn, is that it contains larger geysers and hot springs than are to be found around Lake Tarawera. There is a hot river which is fed from boiling springs below it, and Lake Taupo is a pretty sheet of water twenty-five miles long by twenty in width. Tongariro is an active volcano, much larger than Tarawera, and has been ascended by very few people. The ascent is attended with so many difficulties that we did not care to undertake it, and, as we had seen the most interesting part of the volcanic region of New Zealand, we concluded to return.
A MAORI PROPHET IN THE KING COUNTRY.