The thermæ, or hot baths, of the near future are without doubt the marvellous volcanic springs of Rotorua and the Lake Taupo district, in the North Island. They can now be reached from London, via Francisco, in thirty-three days. They concentrate in a small area all the varied qualities of the European springs, and other curative properties of an extraordinary character, which are not possessed in the same degree by any other known waters. Before Mr. Froude’s Oceana, and the subsequent destruction of the famous pink terraces, little attention had been called to one of the most romantic and amazing spectacles in the world. The old terraces are indeed gone. The idyllic villages, the blossoming slopes are a waste of volcanic ashes and scoriæ through which the dauntless vegetation is only now beginning to struggle. The blue waters are displaced and muddy, but the disaster of one shock could not rob the land of its extraordinary mystery and beauty. For a distance of three hundred miles, south of Lake Taupo and running north, a volcanic crust, sometimes thin enough to be trodden through, separates the foot from a seething mass of sulphur, gas, and boiling water, which around Rotorua and Waikari finds strange and ample vents, in hot streams, clouds of vapour, warm lakes, geysers, occasionally developing into appalling volcanic outbursts, which certainly invest this region with a weird terror, but also with an inconceivable charm, as white vapour breaks amidst flowering bushes, in the midst of true valleys of paradise; the streams ripple hot and crystalline over parti-coloured rocks or through emerald-hued mossy dells; the warm lakes sleep embedded in soft, weedy banks, reflecting huge boulders, half clothed in tropical foliage; coral-like deposits here and there of various tints reproduce the famous terraces in miniature; and geysers, in odd moments, spout huge volumes of boiling water with an unearthly roar eighty feet into the air. At Waikari, near Lake Taupo, specimens of all these wonders are concentrated in a few square miles—the bubbling white mud pools, like foaming plaster of Paris, the petrifying springs, into which a boy fell some time ago, and getting a good silicate coat over him was taken out months afterwards “as good as ever,” so my guide explained.
LAKE ROTORUA.
“What,” I said, “did he not feel even a little poorly?”
“What’s that?” said the guide, and the joke dawning on him burst into a tardy roar.
And time would fail me to tell of the dragon’s mouth, and open rock vomiting sulphur and steam; the lightning pool, in whose depths for ever flash queer opaline subaqueous flashes; the champagne pool, the Prince of Wales’s Feathers, a geyser which can be made to play half an hour after a few clods of mud have blocked up a little hot stream; the steam hammer, the fairy bath, the donkey engine, etc.
At Rotorua we bought blocks of soap and threw them in to make a certain big geyser spout. The Maoris have still the monopoly there; you pay toll, cross a rickety bridge with a Maori girl as guide, and then visit the pools, terraces, and boiling fountains. They are not nearly so picturesque as at Waikari, which is a wilderness of blossoming glens, streams, and wooded vales. But you see the Maori in his native village.
The volcanic crust is warm to the feet; the Maori huts of “toitoi” reeds and boards are all about; outside are warm pools; naked boys and girls are swimming in them; as we approach they emerge half out of the water; we throw them threepenny bits. The girls seem most eager and dive best—one cunning little girl about twelve or thirteen, I believe, caught her coin each time under water long before it sank, but throwing up her legs half out of water dived deep, pretending to fetch it up from the bottom. Sometimes there was a scramble under water for the coin; the girls generally got it; the boys seemed half lazy. We passed on.
“Here is the brain pot,” said our Maori belle; a hollowed stone. It was heated naturally—the brains cooked very well there in the old days—not very old days either.
“Here is the bread oven.” She drew off the cloth, and sure enough in a hole in the hot ground there were three new loaves getting nicely browned. “Here are potatoes,” and she pointed to a little boiling pool, and the potatoes were nearly done; and “here is meat,”—a tin let into the earth, that was all, contained a joint baking; and farther on was a very good stew—at least, it being one o’clock, it smelt well enough. And so there is no fuel and no fire wanted in this and dozens of other Maori pahs or hamlets. In the cold nights the Maoris come out of their tents naked, and sit or even sleep in the hot shallow lakelets and pools hard by. Anything more uncanny than this walk through the Rotorua Geyser village can hardly be conceived. The best springs are rented from the Maoris by the Government, or local hotel-keepers. These are now increasingly fashionable bathing resorts. The finest bath specific for rheumatism is the Rachel bath, investing the body with a soft, satiny texture, and a pearly complexion; the iron, sulphur, and especially the oil bath, from which when you emerge you have but to shake yourself dry. But the Priest’s bath, so called from the discoverer, Father Mahoney—who cured himself of obstinate rheumatism—is perhaps of all the most miraculous in its effects, and there are no two opinions about it. Here take place the most incredible cures of sciatica, gout, lumbago, and all sorts of rheumatic affections. It is simply a question of fact.