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Updated: July 22, 2025
The natives have gradually been straitened in room, and their numbers have steadily declined. They are nearly all in the North Island, in the neighbourhood of the Hot Lake district. The portion specially alloted to them is called the King Country, and no European may enter this without permission. Thus they have prevented the ascent of Mount Tongariro, which is tapu, or sacred.
The origin of other totems, equally strange, if not even stranger, is similarly accounted for, though otherwise unaccountable. One of the New-Zealand chiefs claimed as his progenitor the neighbouring great mountain, Tongariro. This seemingly-whimsical belief becomes intelligible when we observe how easily it may have arisen from a nickname.
On all sides, however, trachytic cones arise, of which the most remarkable group lies to the south of the lake, just in front of the two giant trachytic cones, the loftiest in New Zealand, one called Tongariro, rising about 6,500 feet, and the other Ruapahu, which attains an elevation of over 9,000 feet, with the summit capped by snow.
There is also, at no great distance from this mountain, a region containing numerous funnel-shaped chasms, emitting hot water, or steam, or sulphurous vapors, or boiling mud. The earthquakes in New Zealand had probably their origin in this volcanic focus. Tongariro has a height of about 6,500 feet, while Egmont, 8,270 feet in height, is a perfect cone with a perpetual cap of snow.
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