A SHORT ACCOUNT OF AN ASCENT OF THE VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN OF TONGARIRO IN THE NORTH ISLAND.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 126, 4 June 1853, Page 9

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF AN ASCENT OF THE VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN OF TONGARIRO IN THE NORTH ISLAND.

[From the New Zealander.] When at Taupo lake in November last with Major Hume and Captain Cooper, 58th Regiment, I met Mr. Dyson who has been living chiefly in the interior of the country during the last four or five years. He had lately ascended one of the highest and most celebrated mountains in the island, and he dictated to me the data for the following account which he was desirous of having made public :• — "In the month of March, 1851, a little before sunrise I commenced my ascent alone, from the north-western side of the Rotoaire lake. I crossed the plain and ascended the space to the northward of the Whanganui river. Here I got into a valley covered with large blocks of scoriae, which made my progress very difficult. At the bottom of the valley runs the Whanganui river. After crossing the river, which at this place was then not more than a yard broad, I had to ascend the other side of the valley, which, from the unequal nature of the ground, was very tedious, and I kept onwards as straight as I could for the top of the mountain. At last I came to the base of the cone, around which there were large blocks of scoria? which had evidently been vomited out of the crater, and had rolled down the cone. The most formidable part of my journey lay yet before me, namely, the ascent of the cone, and it appeared to me from the position where I stood that it composed nearly one-fourth of the total height of the mountain. I cannot say at what angle the cone lies, but I had to crawl up a considerable portion of it on my hands and feet, and as it is covered with loose cinders and ashes, I often slid down again several feet. There was no snow on the cone or the mountain, unless in some crevices to which the sun's rays did not penetrate. There was not on the cone any vegetation, not even the long wiry grass which grows in scanty patches up to the very base of the cone. The ascent of the cone took me, I should think, four hours at least; but as I had no watch, it is possible from the laborious occupation I was at, that the ascent of the cone looked longer than it was. But whether it was three hours or four that I was clambering up the cone I recollect I hailed with delight the mouth of the great chimney up which I had been toiling. The sun had just begun to dip, and I thought it might be about 1 p.m., so that I had ascended the mountain from the Rotoaire lake in about eight hours. I must confess as I had scarcely any food with me that I kept pushing on a good pace. On the top of Tongariro I expected to behold a magnificent prospect, but the day was now cloudy and I could see no distance. The crater is nearly circular, and from afterwards measuring with the eye a piece of ground about the same size, I should think it was 600 yards in diameter. The lip of the crater was sharp : '"outside there was almost nothing but loose cinders and ashes ; inside the crater there were large overhanging rocks of a pale yellow colour, evidently produced by the sublimation of sulphur. The lip of the crater is not of equal height all round, but I think I could have walked round it. The southern side is the highest, and the northern, where I stood, the lowest. There was no possible way of descending the crater. I stretched out my neck and looked down the fearful abyss which lay gaping before me, but my sight was obstructed by large clouds of steam or vapour, and I don't think I saw thirty feet down. I dropped into the crater several large stones, and it made me shudder to hear some of them rebounding as I supposed from rock to rock,—of some of the stones thrown in I heard nothing. There was a low murmuring sound during the whole time I was at the top, such as you hear at the boiling springs at Rotomahana and Taupo, and which, is not unlike the noise heard in a steamengine room when the engine is at work. There y, was no eruption of water or ashes during the t,"-~iime I was there, nor was there any appearance that there had been one lately. I saw no lava that had a recent appearance ; notwithstanding all this, I did not feel comfortable where I stood in case of an eruption. The air was not cold — the ascent had made me hot—but I had time to cool, for I remained at the crater nearly an

hour. At about 2 p.m., I commenced my descent by the same way that I ascended. A fog or cloud passed over where I was, and caused me to lose my way for a short time. When descending I saw between Tongariro and Ruapahu a lake about a mile in diameter, I could see no stream flowing out of it on its western side. An extinct crater may also be seen near the base of Tongariro. It was almost dark before I reached the Whanganui river, and, although in strong condition and a good walker, I felt completely done up, and I fell asleep in a dry water course. The night was cold, but I slept soundly until daylight, when I immediately rose and continued my descent, and at 10 a.m., I reached my residence at Rotoaire with the shoes almost torn off my foot.

" If I were to go up the Tongariro again I should ascend the large spur on the western side so as to avoid the valley or fissure in which the Whanganui river runs, and continue on this spur as far as it goes. On no account should travellers descend into an amphitheatrelike place, which they cannot fail to see, under the delusion that it is a short cut to the cone, as the ascent out of it is very difficult, and also the descent on the other side. In January, 1851,1 ascended direct from the Rotoaire lake to the summit of the extinct volcano at the north end of the Tongariro mountain, and I was surprised to find the top covered with smooth stones. I think I could have got from this extinct volcano to the true cone.

"The best months to ascend Tongariro are January, February, and March. On no other months can you almost ever find the mountain free from snow. No New Zealander has, I believe, ever been at the top of Tongariro, but they occasionally resort to a boiling sulphurous spring, a considerable distance up the mountain, which has the reputation of being efficacious in the cure of some cutaneous diseases."

Remarks.—This ends Mr. Dyson's account of his ascent. Mr. Bidwell was the first European who ascended Tongariro, and Mr. Dyson is, I believe the second. As there are some doubts whether Mr. Bidwell ascended the true cone, I have pleasure in stating that Mr. Dyson's account tends to prove that he did.

Mr. Bidwell has estimated that Tongariro is 6,200 feet above the level of the sea. The Rev. Mr. Taylor, F.G.S., in his " Leaf from the Natural History of New Zealand," has stated that Tongariro had been estimated to be 16,000 feet high. This last estimate is obviously a mistake, for the following reason :— It has been calculated from the observations of Humboldt, and other travellers, that the temperature of the air within the temperate zone falls one degree of Fahrenheit's scale for every 270 feet we ascend. Now as the mean temperature at the level of the sea in the latitude of Tongariro is about 58 Fahr.—this makes the limit of pepertual snow to be in the neighbourhood of Tongariro 7,020 feet above the oceanic level. But, the summit of Tongariro is below the limit of perpetual snow, seeing that during the summer months of January, February, and March, the mountain is often destitute of snow. It is, therefore, obvious that Tongariro cannot be 7,000 feet high, far less 16,000. The foregoing mode of calculation tends to confirm the accuracy of Mr. Bidwell's estimate. As Tongariro's neighbour, Ruapahu, is constantly covered with snow, this mountain must be upwards of 7,000 feet, and as the snow descends a considerable distance from the summit in summer, I should think it must be about 10,000 feet above the sea.

The difficulty of ascending Tongariro does not entirely arise from its height, or the roughness of the" scoriae, but from the hostility of the natives who have made the mountain " tapu," or sacred, by calling it the backbone and head of their great ancestor. All travellers who have asked permission of the natives to ascend Tongariro, have met with indirect refusals. The only way to get over this difficulty is, to ascend the" mountain unknown to the natives of the place, or even your own natives. Mr. Dyson did this, but his ascent was discovered by a curious accident. During his progress up the mountain he took for a time the little frequented path which leads along the base of Tongariro to Whanganui. A native returning from that place observed his foot-marks, and knew them to be those of a European. As he saw where the footsteps left the path, he, on his arrival at Rotoaire, proclaimed that a European was now wandering about alone on the sacred mountain of Tongariro. The natives immediately sus-

pected it was Mr. Dyson, and they went to his house, waited his return, and took several things from him. He was now a suspected man, and his conduct was watched.

When the reports of gold having been found at Waiheki, in New Zealand, penetrated as far as Taupo, Mr. Dyson made frequent excursions to look for that precious metal among the surrounding mountains, but he met little encouragement, for he could detect no quartz rock in the neighbourhood. From this circumstance an impression got abroad that he had found a mine of diamonds on Tongariro, and that he was secretly collecting them. The natives of Rotoaire would not now tolerate his living so near the sacred mountain, and for the purpose of driving him away they behaved in such a manner that he was obliged to accept the shelter and protection of a great chief of the name of Te Herekiekie, in whose pa at Tokanu, on the Taupo lake, we met him in November, 1852.

This chief of Tokanu was the man who prevented Tongariro being ascended by a party capable of giving a good account of their ascent two years ago, and for the purpose of showing how men's opinions change, even in the rudest walks of life, I will mention the circumstance. In 1850, Governor Grey visited Taupo for the purpose of ascending Tongariro, which undertaking Sir George expected to be able to make under the auspices of the great Taupo chief Te Heu Heu; but this could not be accomplished because Te Herekiekie was prepared to resist by force the ascent. Now the tables were turned, and Te Heu Heu was doing all he could to drive Mr. Dyson out of the Taupo country for having ascended a mountain which he, Te Heu Heu, had brought five Europeans from Auckland to go up.

Just about the time we were in the neighbourhood of the Tongariro, the whole question of Mr. Dyson's ascent had been brought up, in consequence of some misunderstanding between Te Heu Heu and Te Herekiekie about the ownership or right of tapuing Tongariro, and Te Herekiekie's protection of Mr. Dyson, after that gentleman had violated Te Heu Heu's tapu, did not tend to throw oil on the waters. As we had reached Taupo by an unusual route, and as we had halted some days at the base of Tongariro, the first question Te Heu Heu asked us was, if we had been upon the mountain, and he told us that Mr. Dyson had been there. After some time Te Heu Heu informed us that he believed Mr. Dyson had found a large quantity of diamonds on Tongariro, and he showed us a piece of the glittering sulphuret of iron which had been found upon him. We showed Te Heu Heu similar specimens we had procured at some of the volcanic vents (solfataras) on a mountain near his own pa, and we told him they were worthless. Nothing, however, would make him happy on this subject, and nothing would then satisfy him but that we should write a note to Mr. Dyson telling him that he had better be off. An unpleasant communication to make, which we did make, however, for two reasons. First, to let Mr. Dyson see how the wind blew at present in his quarter, and secondly, because Te Heu Heu had just ordered his slaves to kill a large pig to welcome our arrival to his court at Pukawa. In our epistle to Mr. Dyson we put in very soft language the boiling hot words of the great Taupo chief. This note was despatched immediately to Te Herekiekie's pa, which is about four miles across the lake, and I have no doubt it mightily amused Mr. Dyson and his friend, the chief of Tokanu.

As it is often the lot of adventurous travellers to have their statements suspected, so Mr. Dyson asked me to try and authenticate his ascent of Tongariro, for said he, if they doubt Mr. Bid well's ascent of the true cone, whose person is known, they will not believe mine whose person is almost unknown. This is my apology for attaching my name to this document, of inserting much of the foregoing matter, and of introducing the names of my fel-low-travellers. Of course I cannot certify that Mr. Dyson was at the summit of Tongariro, but his conversation on the subject, the beautiful clay model of the mountain, and the crater which he mjide for the information of Major Hume, Captain Cooper, and myself, have left no doubt on our minds but that Mr. Dyson stood on the lip of the crater of Tongariro. A. S. Thomson, M.D., Surgeon, 56th Regiment. Auckland, New Zealand, March 15,1853.