Towards evening Kai-Koumou landed at the foot of the mountains, whose nearer ridges reached precipitously to the riverbank. Here twenty natives, who had disembarked from their canoes, were making preparations for the night. Fires blazed beneath the trees. A chief, equal in rank to Kai-Koumou, advanced with measured pace, and, rubbing his nose against that of the latter, saluted him cordially. The prisoners were stationed in the centre of the encampment, and guarded with extreme vigilance.
The next morning the ascent of the Waikato was resumed. Other boats came from various affluents of the river. Sixty warriors, evidently fugitives from the last insurrection, had now assembled, and were returning, more or less wounded in the fray, to the mountain districts. Sometimes a song arose from the canoes, as they advanced in single file. One native struck up the patriotic ode of the mysterious “Pihé,” the national hymn that calls the Maoris to battle. The full and sonorous voice of the singer waked the echoes of the mountains; and after each stanza his comrades struck their breasts, and sang the warlike verses in chorus. Then they seized their oars again, and the canoes were headed up stream.
During the day a singular sight enlivened the voyage. About four o’clock the canoe, without lessening its speed, guided by the steady hand of the chief, dashed through a narrow gorge. Eddies broke violently against numerous small islands, which rendered navigation exceeding dangerous. Never could it be more hazardous to capsize, for the banks afforded no refuge, and whoever had set foot on the porous crust of the shore would probably have perished. At this point the river flowed between warm springs, oxide of iron colored the muddy ground a brilliant red, and not a yard of firm earth could be seen. The air was heavy with a penetrating sulphureous odor. The natives did not regard it, but the captives were seriously annoyed by the noxious vapors exhaled from the fissures of the soil and the bubbles that burst and discharged their gaseous contents. Yet, however disagreeable these emanations were, the eye could not but admire this magnificent spectacle.
The canoes soon after entered a dense cloud of white smoke, whose wreaths rose in gradually decreasing circles above the river. On the shores a hundred geysers, some shooting forth masses of vapor, and others overflowing in liquid columns, varied their effects, like the jets and cascades of a fountain. It seemed as though some engineer was directing at his pleasure the outflowings of these springs, as the waters and vapor, mingling in the air, formed rainbows in the sunbeams.
For two miles the canoes glided within this vapory atmosphere, enveloped in its warm waves that rolled along the surface of the water. Then the sulphureous smoke disappeared, and a pure swift current of fresh air refreshed the panting voyagers. The region of the springs was passed. Before the close of the day two more rapids were ascended, and at evening Kai-Koumou encamped a hundred miles above the junction of the two streams. The river now turned towards the east, and then again flowed southward into Lake Taupo.
The next morning Jacques Paganel consulted his map and discovered on the right bank Mount Taubara, which rises to the height of three thousand feet. At noon the whole fleet of boats entered Lake Taupo, and the natives hailed with frantic gestures a shred of cloth that waved in the wind from the roof of a hut. It was the national flag.
XLIX
A Momentous Interview
Long before historic times, an abyss, twenty-five miles long and twenty wide, must at some period have been formed by a subsidence of subterranean caverns in the volcanic district forming the centre of the island. The waters of the surrounding country have rushed down and filled this enormous cavity, and the abyss has become a lake, whose depth no one has yet been able to measure.
Such is this strange Lake Taupo, elevated eleven hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, and surrounded by lofty mountains. On the west of the prisoners towered precipitous rocks of imposing form; on the north rose several distant ridges, crowned with small forests; on the east spread a broad plain furrowed by a trail and covered with pumice-stones that glittered beneath a network of bushes; and on the north, behind a stretch of woodland, volcanic peaks majestically encircled this vast extent of water, the fury of whose tempests equaled that of the ocean cyclones.
But Paganel was scarcely disposed to enlarge his account of these wonders, nor were his friends in a mood to listen. They gazed in silence towards the northeast shore of the lake, whither the canoe was bringing them.
The mission established at Pukawa, on the western shores, no longer existed. The missionary had been driven by the war far from the principal dwellings of the insurrectionists. The prisoners were helpless, abandoned to the mercy of the vengeful Maoris, and in that wild part of the island to which Christianity has never penetrated. Kai-Koumou, leaving the waters of the Waikato, passed through the little creek which served as an outlet to the river, doubled a sharp promontory, and landed on the eastern border of the lake, at the base of the first slopes of Mount Manga.
A quarter of a mile distant, on a buttress of the mountain, appeared a pah, a Maori fortification, situated in an impregnable position. The prisoners were taken ashore, with their hands and feet free, and conducted thither by the warriors. After quite a long détour, Glenarvan and his companions reached the pah.
This fortress was defended by an outer rampart of strong palisades, fifteen feet
