316 CENTRAL DISTRICTS—LAKE TAUPO. stantly emit steam, and some deaths have occurred from individuals sinking to the middle in boiling mud. About four miles from the lake is the largest of the Solfataras, which has a diameter of one hundred and fifty yards, and from a muddy hollow in the centre it discharges a stream of hot water. Here, as throughout the district, there is a vast quantity of native sulphur, to whose presence, and the combustion or chemical union into which it enters with the oxygen of water and the atmos phere, these phenomena are to be attributed. Lake Roturua abounds in a species of crayfish of great size, which, with kumeras and maize, constitute the food of the inhabitants. If additional proof were required to rebut the accusations of inefficiency brought against the mis sionaries, it would be found in the circumstance, that in such a district as this, on the little island of Lake Roturua, and surrounded by a tribe of natives bearing the worst characters, we find a mission station, with a permanently resident missionary. The central districts throughout New Zealand are almost destitute of forests, and are also much more level than the country bordering on the sea shore. In ap proaching Lake Taupo from Roturua, some grassy plains are met with, and the country is a species of table land, from the centre of which rises the snow-clad volcanic peak of Tonga Rido. Lake Taupo is thirty-five miles in length and on an average of twenty in breadth ; it is hemmed in by perpen dicular cliffs, of the enormous altitude, in some places, of a thousand feet, and presenting the terraced outline characteristic of trap rocks. There are a few landing places, and the lake receives only one stream, and gives