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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 10 (February 1, 1934)

Volcano Land

Volcano Land.

The extinct volcanic mountain, in its various forms, gives much that is arresting and dramatic to New Zealand's scenic beauty. The Far North, the Auckland isthmus, the northern part of the King Country, and in the South the hills around Akaroa and Lyttelton Harbour, are enhanced in beauty and sense of power and forcefulness by the presence of those long-dead cones and crags and peaks of volcanic rock, many of them now softly grassed in token of the long reign of peace.

There is one mountain above most others that has always seemed to me charged with the possibilities of a great awakening and that is Mt. Edgecumbe, the Putauaki of the Maoris. It is quite startling to come out on such a peak, after passing out of the Otitapu bush on the main road from Rotorua to Whakatane. It plunges up from the plain, grandly isolated from all other mountains; its crater is clear cut, its sides are set at a steeper angle even than those of Ngau-ruhoe.

From the upper Rangitaiki plain the old volcano at sunset sometimes gives a wonderful picture of a burning mountain, when the lofty cone top seems to blaze again with its lava fires that died down centuries ago.