News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1894-09-20


gan to play a piece Of sacred music, and
the whole of the family joined in the
hymn. And all save one of the family
/ persisted.
At the hotel Mr.. cambridge, who
was ON a journey round the world, call
ed the inmates of the hotel together for
prayer, and he told them they had only
few more minutes to live, and as he
was passing out from the hotel the We
tanda fell upon him and crushed him
| 10 death.
We talk about the dumb elements,
| but it is hard for me to believe that they
are dumb, and that the hEe does net feel
the warmth flowing in its own veins,
and that the signing winds have no
sorrow, and that playing fountains
experience no exhilaration, and that the
light does not enjoy illumining the
world, and that the sensitive plant does
not feel your touch, and that the rose,
with all its incense, does not worship.
1t seems that in these paroxysms of the
mountains nature must suffer.
That night nine miles Of the noun
tain changed. 1.-THE terraces, which
had been the pride of the colonies, sank
out of existence No one but the infinite
and the almighty could afford the OBJ
liberation Of such resources of beauty
and glory. The casting down of such
affairs and the humiliation of such tenn
pies would have been an ieonoclasm
that would have affronted the universe
but for the fact that the Lord who made
! Tarawera and Rotomahana has q right
to do what he will with his own, and
the terraces, already beginning to re-
form, may be richer colered and loftier
and more Respondent than their prede-
cessors.
The loss to New Zealand of these
white and pink terraces is what would
be the loss of the Giants causeway to
Ireland, or the loss of the pyramids to
Egypt, or the loss of Niagara falls to
America. The exact physical causes of
this upsetting and down tearing and
mountain splitting leave TO biologists
to guess about. Translating their scien-
tific accounts into easier language, it
seems that the mountains were stiff in
their joints from long standing and
went into play. For great while they
had enjoyed no fireworks, and that
night they illumined New Zealand
with rockets and wheels of fire. The
hills went into games Of leapfrsg and
ball playing and flying kites and boxing
and general romp. They were eShila-
rated with a mixture of gases-sulphur-
! &c, phosphoric and carboniC-and forgot
all the proprieties that mountains usual
! ly observe. But it was not a comedy.
1t was tragedy of the mountains, and
all the King Lears, and the Macbeths,
and the Hamlets, and the Meg Mer-
rifles Of arrangement and horror were
that night on the stage of which the
belching fires were the footlights and
flames hundreds of feet high were the
gorgeous upholstery. Tornadoes of
ashes. Furnaces seven times heated in
which walked the Deity. Grand march
Of God sounded by the avalanches. The
earth bombarding the heavens. Dante's
"Inferno" lifted into the terrestrial.
Maniac elements tearing the clouds into
tatters and grinding rocks under their
heels. That night of June 8, that awful
night in New Zealand, when the native
settlements went down under the ashes
of bursting Tarawera as completely as
Pompeii and Herculaneum under the
burial of Vesuvius, seemed to play ac-
compartment to the words of the old
book, as much revered in New Zealand
as i'll America, an accompaniment in
full diapasCn, an earthquake with its
foot on tho pedal. "The perpetual hills
did bow" "The mountains skipped
like rams - 1.-THE hills melted like
wax" "The foundations of the earth
were shaken" ''He looketh on the
earth, and it trembleth. "
That downfall of the New Zealand
terraces was only conspicuous Cir
cumstance in the history of the world
Mountains are mortal, and they write
their autobiographies ON leaves of stone
All the mountains of New Zealand were
nursed in cradle of earthquake by
parentage of rock and glacier, and they
will have their descendants You can
not bury mountains unobserved. There
must be black pail Of smoke and dead
march sounded by orchestra of elements,
and thunders tolling at the passing fu-
neral of hills, and spade of fire to dig
their grave, and the discharge of all
heavens artillery at their burial, and the
solemn aud overwhelming htany sound
ed Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust
to dust!'
You see it will be well for biologists
to come to New Zealand. Ornithologists
ought also to come. Last evening, al
though it is here midwinter-New Zea-
lands July corresponding with Ameri-
cas- January, although far from being
as cold-I was standing near clump
of trees which still kept all their foliage,
and there were bird voices absolutely
bewildering for numbers and sweetness.
II the notes Of the music there rendered
by the winged choir had been written
on each lie; d, the rendering could not
have hoen more dulcet and resonant. 1t
would take more room and time than [
possess to describe the ornitholosical
riches of New Zealand. First of ALL it's
extinct moa, whose skeleton stands in
the museum of Christchurch-a wing
less bird, or only apologies for wings,
but l 0 feet inches high, neck like
giraffe and foot as wide as a camel S,
this moa, the largest bird whose skele-
ton has ever been reticulated, its eggs
L