James' World 2

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Mount Taranaki, less commonly known as Mount Egmont, is a dormant stratovolcano in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. It is the second highest point in the North Island, after Mount Ruapehu. The 2,518-metre (8,261 ft) mountain has a secondary cone, Fanthams Peak (Māori: Panitahi), 1,966 meters (6,450 ft), on its south side.

The name Taranaki comes from the Māori language. The Māori word tara means mountain peak, and Naki is thought to come from ngaki, meaning “shining”, a reference to the snow-clad winter nature of the upper slopes. It was also named Pukehaupapa and Pukeonaki by iwi who lived in the region in “ancient times”.

Captain Cook named it Mount Egmont on 11 January 1770 after John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, a former First Lord of the Admiralty who had supported the concept of an oceanic search for Terra Australis Incognita. Cook described it as “of a prodigious height and its top covered with everlasting snow,” surrounded by a “flat country … which afforded a very good aspect, being clothed with wood and verdure”.

When the French explorer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne saw the mountain on 25 March 1772 he named it Pic Mascarin. He was unaware of Cook’s earlier visit.

It appeared as Mount Egmont on maps until 29 May 1986, when the name officially became “Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont” following a decision by the Minister of Lands. The Egmont name still applies to the national park that surrounds the peak and geologists still refer to the peak as the Egmont Volcano.

As part of the treaty settlement with Ngā Iwi o Taranaki the mountain will be officially named Taranaki Maunga. As of 18 July 2021, the settlement has not yet been completed.

Taranaki is geologically young, having commenced activity approximately 135,000 years ago. The most recent volcanic activity was the production of a lava dome in the crater and its collapse down the side of the mountain in the 1850s or 1860s. Between 1755 and 1800, an eruption sent a pyroclastic flow down the mountain’s northeast flanks, and a moderate ash eruption occurred about 1755, of the size of Ruapehu’s activity in 1995/1996. The last major eruption occurred around 1655. Recent research has shown that over the last 9,000 years minor eruptions have occurred roughly every 90 years on average, with major eruptions every 500 years. Wikipedia

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An image of Mount Taranaki

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Bellagio is a lovely town with a great deal of character on the shores of Lake Como in Lombardy. It is also one of the popular ferry stops on the lake so most visitors to Lake Como will find themselves here sooner or later!

The town is situated quite centrally on Lake Como at the point where the lake divides into two ‘branches’ towards the south-east and south-west and is often referred to as the ‘pearl of the lake’, partly because of its beauty and partly because of this position between the two branches of the lake. Source: Italy This Way

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An image from Bellagio, Italy

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