The darkness caused by the ashes which fell in a ceaseless shower for eighteen hours, continued till noon the next day, when it was seen that not only had the beautiful marble terraces vanished, but the whole valley had been blown into the air by the tremendous force of imprisoned steam. A traveller describing the scene of desolation says,[Footnote: Miss Gordon Cumming on "The Eruption of Tarawera in 1885."] "Even living birds were coated with mud, while for some days after the eruption the poor bewildered cattle roamed about this dreary wilderness mad with hunger and thirst, gnawing boughs of trees or decayed wood, bellowing pitifully, and with eyes bloodshot and nostrils choked with greasy slate-coloured mud, which lay an inch thick all over their coats." 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.