In the volcanic region between the Bay of Plenty on the north and Lake Taupo, with its giant sentinels Ruapehu and Tongariro on the south, is Lake Tarawera, overhung by the volcano of Tarawera, which had never in the memory of the Maori given any sign of eruption. A river of the same name connected the lake with the much smaller basin of Rotomahana, in which the water was hot owing to the numerous thermal springs in its immediate vicinity. Rotomahana was really a crater of explosion, and the principal boiling spring, Te Tarata, descending from terrace to terrace down to the lake, was the greatest marvel in this marvellous region. Upon the Mount of Tarawera were the graves of many generations of Arawa heroes and chiefs of might; nor dared profane feet disturb their rest for fear of the fiery dragon which, though never yet seen by Maori eyes, kept watch and ward. At the mountain's foot lay the sister lake, into whose waters--green as the stone in far Te Wai Pounamou--flowed the river, charged with a fervent message from hot-hearted Rotomahana with his terraced fringe of white and pink, laced with the blue of pools which in perfect stillness lie, And give an undistorted image of the sky. Eighty feet above the warmed water of Rotomahana was the basin of Te Tarata, with wall of clay, thirty feet in height. Its length was eighty feet, its breadth sixty, and it was filled full of exquisitely clear, boiling water, as blue as the sky above the swirl of azure vapour which constantly overhung the wondrous pool. In the depths, far below the placid surface, sounded ever the rumble and grumble of immense quantities of water on the boil, and the overflow had formed a crystal stairway, white as Parian marble, to the lake beneath. From step to step was the height of a tall man, the breadth of each platform five or six times that measure, and every shining step was an arc of the great circle of which the red-walled crater of Rotomahana was the centre. Each ledge was overhung with stalactites, pure as alabaster, and every platform held its pools of limpid, azure water of all degrees of warmth, in baths whose elegance would have charmed a Roman eye. On the opposite side of the lake was the spring of Otaka Puarangi, its tranquil blue water confined in a basin little more than half the size of Te Tarata. Its silicious deposits used to "descend from its orifice down to the lake," and were scaled "by a marble staircase, so sharp in its outline, so regular in its construction, and so adorned with graceful borders of evergreen shrubs that it seemed as if Nature had designed it in very mockery of the skill and industry of man."