"We reached the beautiful lake of Okareka," the journal entry for 27 December 1849, runs, "just at a place where there is a spring of deliciously cool water, wherewith we all refreshed ourselves and then proceeded to cross the lake in canoes. The lake is really an extremely pretty sight, the shores being lofty and wooded, with the exception of a valley at each end, where the roads run. A peninsula, on which stands the pa called Taumaihi, juts out into the centre of the lake. The waters are beautifully clear, and very deep. There is no apparent outlet to this lake. Its vent consists of an underground stream, which is hidden for about half a mile, and then makes its appearance, looking like a fountain, gushing through a heap of rocks and square stones of a basaltic formation, whence it makes its way in a small stream to Tarawera, the level of which is about sixty feet lower than that of Okareka, and into which the water falls down a declivity of twenty feet, forming a beautiful cascade, surrounded and overshadowed by a clump of karaka and other evergreen trees."