Lake Rotomahana, like Tarawera, stands at an elevation of a little over 1000 feet above the level of the sea. It is one of the smallest of the group, and is about a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide. It is, however, very picturesque, not only by reason of the unequalled features presented by the terraces, but likewise on account of its steaming shores, with their countless marvels, as well as by the bold, rugged scenery which surrounds it on every side. It is the seat of a vast thermal action, which spreads out to the base of the conical hills which encircle it, and beyond which the towering mountains, as they rise thousands of feet in height, appear to have been heated and twisted about by the terrific action of volcanic fire, while the deep gorges and dark ravines seem to have formed at some period or another the channels for the streams of boiling lava. Everywhere around one sees the wondrous working of fire and water, and, although these tremendous forces appear to have nearly expended their strength in the geysers, mud-holes, and _fumaroles_, and other active evidences of subterranean work to be seen at the present day, there was no doubt a time when the whole region surrounding this curious lake was the scene of a widely extended volcanic action. There was a soft balmy stillness in the air as we glided over its singularly dark green water, which was in many places covered with large air-bubbles sent up by the hot springs from the depths below, and it was interesting to reflect that a capsize into one of these places would have resulted in one or two of us, at least, being hauled out parboiled.[34] Our primitive canoe, however, which was literally freighted to her gunwale, behaved admirably. This craft, which had been fashioned, some sixty years ago, out of a solid log of _totara_, about thirty feet long, was as staunch as the day she was launched, notwithstanding the fact that she had done good service as a kind of first-class privateer on the troubled waters of the lakes during the Maori War. We rounded a low point where was a large _solfatara_ named Te Whakataratara, whose greenish, slimy water boiled up from between enormous blocks of pure yellow sulphur and redhot-looking rocks of pumice and silicious sinter.