One side of the mountain fell in, and then the eruption began.  The basin of the lake was broken up and disappeared, but again reappeared as a boiling mud cauldron; craters burst out in various places, and the beautiful terraces were no more.  After the first day the violence gradually diminished, and in a week had ceased.  Very possibly another lake will be formed, and in time other terraces; but it is hardly within the range of probability that the beauty of the lost terraces will ever be paralleled.

In this eruption, as usual, we find the earthquake preceding the volcanic outburst.  New Zealand, like the Philippines, Java and the Japanese Islands, is situated over a great earth-fissure or line of weakness.  Subsidence or dislocation from tensile strain of the crust took place, and the influx of water to new regions of heated strata may have developed the explosive force.  The earthquake and the volcano worked together here, as they frequently do, unfortunately in this case destroying one of the most beautiful scenes on the surface of the globe.

THE ANTARCTIC VOLCANOES

Much further south, on the frozen shore of Victoria Land in the Antarctic regions, Sir James Ross, in 1841, sailing in his discovery ships the Erebus and Terror, discovered two great volcanic mountains, which he named after those two vessels.  Mount Erebus is continually covered, from top to bottom, with snow and glaciers.  The mountain is about 12,000 feet high, and although the snow reaches to the very edge of the crater, there rise continually from the summit immense volumes of volcanic fumes, illuminated by the glare of glowing lava beneath them.  The vapors ascend to an estimated height of 2,200 feet above the top of the mountain.

CHAPTER XXV.

The Wonderful Hawaiian Craters and Kilauea’s Lake of Fire.

In the central region of the North Pacific Ocean lies the archipelago formerly known as the Sandwich Islands, now collectively designated as Hawaii.  The people of the United States should be specially interested in this island group, for it has become one of our possessions, an outlying Territory of our growing Republic, and in making it part of our national domain we have not alone extended our dominion far over the seas, but have added to the many marvels of nature within our land one of the chief wonders of the world, the stupendous Hawaiian volcanoes, before whose grandeur many of more ancient fame sink into insignificance.

THE ISLAND OF HAWAII