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Chapter II.

Ohinemutu, Tikitere, and Mokoia.

e spent the week succeeding our day at Whaka-rewarewa in looking round at Ohinemutu, in visiting Tikitere and Mokoia, and in studying the natives. And we had a most interesting time.

Sulphur Point is the leading wonder at Ohinemutu. It is a tract of over a hundred acres of hot sulphurous ground, on a peninsula on the south-east shore of Rotorua. This is the site of the grand Government sanatorium. And in explaining the nature and object of that scheme we cannot do better than quote from The New Zealand Herald, which, in January last, published an announcement and plan of it at length:—

"All the arrangements," says the Herald, "have now been completed with respect to the town at Ohinemutu, on the margin of Rotorua Orders have been given by the Government to Mr. Mahoney, architect, for plans for the erection of the necessary buildings, and shortly a book will appear, forming a guide to the district. The buildings to be erected will consist of a grand bath pavilion—to be supplied with water from four distinct springs, having different properties, and supplied with cold fresh water,—bath-sheds at Sulphur Point and Omawhata, medical residence of twenty-four rooms, hospital, &c., &c. . . . The bath-house is to have twelve baths to begin with, three of which are to have a separate entrance for females; an attendants' room, with washing machine and hot press; two waiting rooms, &c., &c. . . . A block of about seven acres is to be devoted to a Spa house, or grand hotel. . . . The Pukeroa, just overhanging the native town, is to be made a recreation reserve; and reserves are also to page 22 be laid aside for a museum, library, and assembly rooms. A site is also marked off for the erection of a Government school and college buildings, and other blocks as endowments for these institutions. The township contains an area of 600 acres, which, we may mention, is not much short of the area of the city of Auckland, which has 655 acres. But only about 125 acres have at present been subdivided for sale, the balance being retained for future extension. A thoroughly qualified medical officer will be appointed without delay." [Dr. Lewis is already there.]

The sale of the allotments, town and suburban, took place in March of the present year, and realized in most instances considerably over upset prices. The land is not freehold, but sold on lease of ninety-nine years by the Government, on behalf of the natives. The upset price of the total sale was £1,611, the actual realization £62,739 10s. And the actual realization of the happy purchasers will presently be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, for it will take pretty well all the ninety-nine years to realize anything else from most of that land. And the yearly rental income to the natives, minus, of course, Government's little pickings in the way of expenses, will be £2,739 10s. Himmel! what a glorious perpetual drunk that means, the prohibitory liquor law notwithstanding.

The principal streets of the new town were already laid off and named when we went there. Ranolf, Amohia, Tutanekai, Hinemoa, Whakaue, and Amohau are among the mellifluous titles in which they rejoice. But the giant, the leviathan street is fitly named Fenton, after the Chief Judge of Native Land Courts, who has taken a most active part in the furtherance of this grand project for utilizing the mineral waters. Fenton Street is two chains wide and runs clear from the margin of Rotorua out to the great geyser of Whakarewarewa, nearly, if not quite three miles.

Preparations for building were already under way when we visited Sulphur Point, and if the Government project be carried out, the world will shortly witness the fulfilment of Miss Gordon Cumming's prophecy that "this district will be a vast sanatorium page 23 to which sufferers from all manner of diseases will be sent to Nature's own dispensary to find the healing waters suited to their need."

There will have to be an alteration in the atmosphere of Sulphur Point before anyone will live there voluntarily, I fancy. A wholesome scent of sulphur is well enough, but the odour that greets the traveller's nose, when the wind is blowing across the Point towards him, is unpleasant to the last degree, and seems a doubly distilled, concentrated essence of everything that is nasty. It may be a healthy smell, but one fails to realize it that way, and one carefully holds one's nose till one gets past the turbid and apparently stagnant pools whence it arises.

The first object of interest we came to was Te Kauhangi (The Painkiller), a bath of dark-coloured water supplied by a boiling spring adjacent, and said to be highly curative of rheumatism, and all kindred ailments. After that comes Priest's Bath, near which a priest once abode for three months, bathing in the water daily for hours, and ultimately reaping his reward in a perfect cure of a chronic rheumatic affection. Next is Oawhata, a clear, bright pool of boiling water; and after that comes a bubbling pond, from which a powerful anaesthetic gas arises that it is wise to keep to windward of. A little further is a broad, white pool of water, said to contain sulphur, arsenic, and other minerals in strong solution; and after that we came to the Sulphur Cups, Cream Cups, and Coffee Pot, all marvellously curious and interesting. The Cups vary in size, and in every one, down to the very tiniest, a milky looking fluid continually doth boil. There must be nearly two hundred of them in all. They rise like cones from a flat, composed entirely of what looks like flour of sulphur. The Coffee Pot is a good sized basin of thick boiling fluid, not unlike badly made coffee. From these we paid a visit to several baths and springs, amongst them the notable "Stonewall Jackson" (why so called, I know not), which has cured, I am told, a bad case of white leprosy. The final wonder is "Madame Rachael," a wide, deep cauldron of clear blue, ever-boiling water. A bath in this would be the last that anybody would be likely to want; and, page 24 probably, one's friends wouldn't have any funeral bother on one's account after it either, for what Madame Rachael absorbs doesn't come up again, and her depths are unfathomable. The other Madame Rachael had similar characteristics, if I remember aright Whether this similarity suggested the title of the cauldron, or whether it arose from the soft, enamelled, polished, satiny feeling of the skin after a bath in a neighbouring lukewarm pool, supplied by Madame Rachael, I was unable to ascertain.

Sulphur Point, though the most curious, is by no means the only hot ground about Ohinemutu. The little peninsula, whereon is the native settlement, literally teems with hot springs. It is said that the peninsula was once much more extensive, but that it sank one night suddenly, and all upon it lies submerged in Rotorua. Some carved posts, said to be the remnants of the palisade surrounding the old pa, still stand, half immersed, at the edge of the peninsula, as proof of the truth of this tragic tradition.

Accidents frequently happen in the Hot Springs. A little tombstone on the peninsula records how one Ellen Wilson, a child of two years or so, was scalded to death in a spring, and this is only one of a number of similar occurrences in this locality.

The natives here have no trouble with cooking or laundry work. Steaming and boiling are equally easy for the one, and the pools of soft, lathery hot water, with rinsing convenience in the lake, facilitate all operations in the other. The Ohinemutu natives are a clean-looking, robust set of people. So are their neighbours at Whakarewarewa. Indeed, it would be odd if they were not clean-looking, considering the amount of warm bathing they indulge in. The little bay by the peninsula is all warm water, and in this the Maoris, young and old, male and female, bathe constantly. Between soaking themselves in hot water and baking themselves in the sunshine, their lives flit pleasantly and lazily by. If they have plenty of riwai and tobacco, all is well; if they have plenty of rum, all is better. If rest be happiness, then these people are filled up with happiness, for the rest mostly all the time. Everything is so easy for them page 25 "Paddy Murphy," in a recent issue of the Dunedin Saturday Advertiser, writes very amusingly about Rotorua. With the freedom of an old acquaintance, we annex his poem.