No one, however, Maori or white, seriously conceived of anything like the destruction that was impending. The landlord of the Wairoa hotel grumbled at the native guide Sophia for telling of these ominous incidents. And a Maori chief, with some followers, went to camp upon two little islets in Roto-mahana lying handy for the hot bathing-pools. Why should any one expect that the flat-topped, heavy looking mountain of Tarawera would burst out like Krakatoa? True, Tarawera means “burning peak,” but the hill, and its companion Ruawahia, must have been quiescent for many hundred years. For were not trees growing in clefts near the summits with trunks as thick as the height of a tall man? Nor was there any tradition of explosions on the spot. Thirteen generations ago, said the Maori, a famous chief had been interred in or near one of the craters, and Nature had never disturbed his resting-place. The surprise, therefore, was almost complete, and only the winter season was responsible for the small number of tourists in the district on the 10th of June. It was about an hour past midnight when the convulsion began. First came slight shocks of earthquake; then noises, booming, muttering, and swelling to a roar. The shocks became sharper. Some of them seemed like strokes of a gigantic hammer striking upwards. Then, after a shock felt for fifty miles round, an enormous cloud rose above Tarawera and the mountain spouted fire, stones, and dust to the heavens. The burning crater illumined the cloud, so that it glowed like a “pillar of fire by night.” And above the glow an immense black canopy began to open out and spread for at least sixty miles, east, north-east and south-east. Seen from far off it had the shape of a monstrous mushroom. In the earlier hours of the eruption the outer edges of the mushroom shape were lit up by vivid streams and flashes of lightning, shooting upward, downward, or stabbing the dark mass with fierce sidelong thrusts. Forked bolts sped in fiery zig-zags, or ascended, rocket-fashion, to burst and fall in flaming fragments. Sounds followed them like the crackling of musketry. Brilliantly coloured, the flashes were blue, golden or orange, while some were burning bars of white that stood out, hot and distinct, across the red of the vomiting crater. But more appalling even than the cloudy canopy with its choking dust, the tempest, the rocking earth, or the glare of lightning, was the noise. After two o’clock it became an awful and unceasing roar, deafening the ears, benumbing the nerves, and bewildering the senses of the unhappy beings within the ring of death or imminent danger. It made the windows rattle in the streets of Auckland one hundred and fifty miles away, and awoke many sleepers in Nelson at a more incredible distance. And with the swelling of the roar thick darkness settled down--darkness that covered half a province for hours. Seven hours after the destruction began, settlers far away