" And of the smiling valley itself, she
says: "Where, but a few days previously, the wild fowl were swimming
securely among the reeds and sedges which bordered the quiet lakes, there
now exists only a chaotic wilderness of cones and craters all in hideous
activity, ejecting clouds of pestilential black smoke and showers of
stones. One large crater was in full action on the spot where the beautiful
Pink Terrace had hitherto gladdened all visitors by its loveliness, and
another apparently close to the White Terrace was throwing up masses of
black dust and steam, which rose in columns thousands of feet in height."
There is a verse in the hundred and fourth Psalm which tells how God
"touched the hills, and they smoke." There are many burning and smoking
mountains in different parts of the world, besides those which have risen
from the depths of the sea; some of them have destroyed whole cities by hot
streams of lava or showers of ashes; there are some whose high peaks are
covered with snow, and yet from those snowy heights the fire sometimes
breaks forth; and there are others which are called extinct volcanoes,
because the fire no longer breaks forth from them as it once did; but Mount
Tarawera has taught us not to be too sure that a volcano which has been
quiet for more than a hundred years is really extinct.
Hot springs, earthquakes, burning mountains, all tell the same tale:
somewhere beneath the earth's surface there is a quantity of heated
material, and these "convulsions of nature" which are so terrible in their
effects come from the efforts made by it to escape from its prison.
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