A volcanic city
This vividly coloured map shows us Auckland through the eyes of German geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. You can see a few man-made features recorded here, such as the Royal Oak Hotel and the Harp Inn.
But the focal points of this scientific survey are the deep orange volcanoes and their related landform's fertile soils, lava flows, tuff rings and swamps.
The volcano in the centre of this close-up is Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, which was home to the Wai-o-Hua and Ngāti Whātua iwi (tribes) in the 1600's and 1700's. Maungakiekie means mountain of the kiekie, a native epiphyte which grows on forest trees. By the time Europeans settled in Auckland in 1840, the forest was gone. The single remaining tree, a tōtara, gave the hill its other Māori name, Te Tōtara i Ahua the tōtara that stands alone.
The fine parallel lines feathering out from Maungakiekie are hachures a traditional way of showing the direction and steepness of slopes. The darker pink, cloud-like shapes depict the lava flow created by One Tree Hill's last eruption, which occurred about 20,000 years ago.
Map details: Geology by Ferdinand von Hochstetter (18291884) in 1859, cartography by A. Petermann in 1862, published in Geologisch-Topographischer Atlas von Neu-Seeland in 1863. View catalogue entry.