ithout doubt the most striking physical features of the Auckland area are its volcanoes. On any fine day go to the top of such vantage points around the city as Mt Eden, Mt Albert and One Tree Hill - themselves extinct volcanic cones - and you will enjoy panoramic views of the Auckland landscape dotted with the abundant evidence of prior volcanic activity.

To the layperson, cones perhaps most typify volcanic activity, but eruptions also leave other marks on the land. Some of these are the waterfilled depressions exemplified by Lake Pupuke and Orakei and Panmure Basins.

Few of the cones have retained their original unsullied symmetry. Offering, as they did, ideal strategic defense points to the Maori in their frequent warring over the much coveted lands hereabouts, they were enthusiastically reshaped into the terraces, ramparts and pits of fighting pa. Judging by the enormous quantities of soil that were moved by primitive tools and sheer muscle power, fear of attack must have been an effective motivating force. In any event, muscle power was not in short supply in the pre-Pakeha period. Indications are that the Auckland area was among the most densely settled and most coveted areas in all Aotearoa, due, in no small part, to the fertile soils and equitable climate of the region.

All this fortification was to little avail, however, particularly when the northern tribes became the first to obtain muskets, and at the time of the first Pakeha settlement the Tamaki Isthmus, where Auckland is now centred, was largely depopulated.

Captain David Rough, who was among the first to inspect the settlement site, wrote in 1840: