The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1894-09-21
FRIDAY MORNING. SEPT. q, 1894.

Tho changes in the mountain ranges
are enough to set a geologist wild
with interest or send him running
up and down these attitudes with crow
bar to dig. or hammer TO strike, or tape
line to measure. On night in June.
1856, the mountains of Tarawera and
Rotomahana, New Zealand, had a grand
frolic. For many years tourists had gone
TO visit the Terraces" as they were
called--ateient forms of volcanic erup-
ton.
There Were stairs of pictured stoaos,
step above step OF pumice and lava,
reaching from earth toward heaven, but
some of the steps of the stairs 80 and
100 feet high-not SO much q jacobs
ladder as an omnipotent stairway, up
and down which walked all the splea-
doris and majrsties md grandeurs and
radiances of day and night and sunshine
and tempest, of summer and Winter, Of
decades and centuries and ages. These
steps seemed to be made out of pearls,
prisms, petrified hyacinth, lily and VIC.
lot and all laid out as with divine
geometry. Such curve, such bosses of
txQuisiteness, such ascents and descents,
bewildering with almost supernatural
glories. Masonry sm6othed by invisible
trowels, walls regulated by Invisible
plumb lines, colors put ON by invisible
pencils, sculpture cut by invisible CHS
els On the night of June 8, 1886, the
moon was passing into the second quar-.
ter when, 10 minutes after O'Clock, the
earth shook and mountains erupted.
Standing 10, IL, IA miles of tho people
selt the shock and stw the ascent of the
steam column and the redhot rocks ard
the volcanic ash and scoria. and the
smoke, looking like d vast pine tree, ac-
cording to the statements of the poetic,
but like an umbrella or mushroom, ac-
cording to the description of the rustic,
Those who lived near tho base of the
hills did not survive to tell the tale of
the catastrophe The detonations were
heard $50 miles away. That was a can,
honading in which the batteries were
touched off by hidden dynamics. Such
a combination Of wrath and splendor
was never before seen in New Zealand.
1t seemed rs il all the hyenas of rage
were snarling at all the famingoes Of
beauty. The lake Kissed as with ten
thousand serpents when the hot bombs
Of the mountain dropped into it.
The malodors of burning iron oxides
and magnesia and chlorine and alumina
and sulphur filled all the regions ap-
proximate with suffocation, strangula-
ton and asphyxia. Sixty miles felt the
hpheayal, and from Auckland, more
than 1870 miles away, ship put out for
the rescue of vessel supposed to be
burning at sea, the mistaken FIRE being
that of this burning mountain. In the
house of Mr.. Hazard, devout Chris
.ian mar, as the ashes and trees and
stone began t drop heavily on the Roof
a Christian daughter, believing that
they must die, sat down at cabinet or
gan to play 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 journey round the world, call
ed the inmates of the hotel together for
prayer, and he told them they had only
a few more minutes to live, and as he
was passing out from the hotel the ve-
fanda fell upon him and crushed him
TO death.
We talk about the dumb elements,
but it is hard for me to believe that they
are dumb, and that the fire does not feel
the warmth flowing in its own veins,
and that the signing winds have no
sorrow, and that playing fountains
experience 10 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. "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
Piles would have been an iconoclasm
that would have affronted the universe
but for the fact that the Lord who mado
Tarawera and Rotomahana has right
to do what he will with his own, and
the terraces, already beginning to re-
form, may be richer colored 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 I leave to biologists
to guess about. Translating their scien-
tific accounts into easier language, it
seems that tho mountains were stiff in
their joints from long standing and
went into play. For a 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 leapfrog and
ball playing and flying kites and boxing
and general romp They were exhila-
rated with mixture of gases-sulphur-
ic, phosphoric and carbonic-and forgot
all the proprietics that mountains usual
ly observe. But it was not 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
be1ching fires were Tie footlights and
flames hundreds of feet high were the
gorgeous upholstery. Tornadocs 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