The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-09-16

up and down which walked all the splen-
doris and maesties and 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, petrifed hyacinth, lily, and vio-
let, and all laid out as with a divine
geometry. Such curve, such bosses of
exquisiteness, such ascents and deScents
bewildering with almost
SUPERNATURAL GLoRIEs!
Masonry smothered by invisible trowels ;
walls regulated by invisible plumb lines !;
colors put on by invisible pencils; sculpt-
ure cut by invisible chisels. On the night
of June g. 1856, the moon was passing into
the second quarter, when ten minutes
after two o'clock the earth shook and the
mountains erupted. Standing, ten, twelve,
fourteen miles off the people felt the
shock and saw the ascent Of the steam
column and the red-hOt rocks and the
volcanic ash and scoria, and the smoke
looking like a vast pine tree, according to
the statements OF the poetic, but like an
umbrella or mushroom according to the
description of the rustic. Those who
lived near the base of the hills did not
survive TO tell the tale Of the catastrophe.
The detOnatiOns were heard $50 miles
away. That was cannonading in which
the batteries were touched off by hidden
dynamics. Such a combination of wrath
and splendOr were never before seen in
New Zealand. 1t seemed as if all the bye
mas of rage were Snarling at all the 1amin
goes 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 approximate
with suffocatiOn, strangulation, and as
phyxia. Sixty miles felt the upheaval;
and from Auckland, more than 100 miles
away, a ship put out for the rescue of a
vessel supposed to be burning at seattle
mistaken fire being that of this burning
mountain. In the house of Mr. Hazard, a
devout Christian man, as the ashes and
trees and stone began 10 drop heavily on
the roof, a Christian daughter, believing
that they must die sat down at a cabinet
organ 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 MIR cambridge, who was
on a Journey round the world, called 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 We
randall fell upon him and crushed him to
death.
We talk about the dumb elements, but
il 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 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 in
cense. does not worship. 1t seems that in
these paroxysms of the mountains, nature
must suffer.
That night nine miles Of the mountains
! changed The Terrace which had
been the pride of the Colonies, sank out
| of existence. No one but the infinite and
| the Almighty could afford the oblitera-
ton Of such resources Of beauty and
| glory The casting down of such affairs
and the humiliation Of such temples
would have been an iconoclasm that would
| have afronted the universe but for the
the fact that the Lord who made Tara
vera and Rotomahana has right TO do
what he will with his own; and the Te--
races, already beginning to reform, may
| be richer colored and loftier and more
| resplendent than their predecessors 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 10 Egypt or the loss Of Niagara
! Fails TO America The exact causes Of
! this upsetting and down-tearing and
mountain-spitting / leave 10 biologists TO
! guess about. Translating their scientific
! accounts into easier language, IL seems
| that the mountains were stin in their
! Joints from long standing ana went into
| NAV. For a great while they had enjoyed
! no fireworks, and that night they IL
| lumined New Zealand with rockets and
| wheels OF fire. The Mills went into the