360 Transactions. — Botany. 



1. My Fiest Visit to Lake Waikarb. 



It was in December, 1841, that I first saw Waikaremoana. 

 I had left the Bay of Islands (my place of residence) on the 

 19th of November, on board of a small vessel proceeding down 

 the East Coast, which landed me at "Wharekahika (Hicks 

 Bay), between Cape Runaway and the East Cape. At this 

 place I had also landed about five years before, on a mis- 

 sionary visit to the Maoris of these parts, so that on this 

 occasion I was not wholly among strangers. 



Having stayed a few days in this neighbourhood, and 

 engaged five Maoris as baggage-bearers, I journeyed leisurely 

 down the coast towards Poverty Bay, detecting not a few 

 novelties in entomology, conchology (fossil and modern), and 

 botany. Two common yet striking objects in particular may 

 be mentioned, as such are not found here in Hawke's Bay— 

 the one geological, the other botanical. The rocks in the 

 vicinity of Hicks Bay were chiefly composed of sand and 

 pudding-stone, the latter containing immensely large oyster- 

 shells, some of which were petrified, and contained in their 

 cavities very fine crystals of lime. A walk of a few miles 

 brought me to Te Kawakawa, a village situate on the im- 

 mediate seashore, under a high and almost perpendicular 

 cliff of white clay. The cliffs here are composed of a bluish 

 indurated clay and conglomerate, and contain marine fossils. 

 On these shores the clayey rocks had been so acted upon by 

 the sea as to be worn quite flat, in many places stretching 

 out into a continuous horizontal layer of rock of nearly a 

 mile in length. On them grew a peculiar kind of large pro- 

 cumbent thin Alga, which, boiled or steamed, is commonly 

 used as an article of food by the Maoris of these parts : they 

 call it parengo, also karengo. This plant, when dried in the 

 sun, is made up into small lots, and sent to their friends 

 residing in the inland districts, who send the donors potted 

 forest-birds in return. When growing fresh and wet it is 

 exceedingly slippery to walk on. The pohutukawa* trees here 

 form a thick and evergreen rampart between the sea-beach 

 and the mainland (or bases of the cliffs and hills), the roots 

 and trunks being often laved by the flowing tide. At the 

 north this tree attains to a much larger size. There, too, it 

 invariably inhabits the immediate sea -shore, though generally 

 growing singly, often grotesquely hanging in an almost pendent 

 manner from rocky cliffs and headlands, and always adding 

 largely to the beauty of the scene. Here, in a clayey rock 

 near high-water mark, the natives show the impression of 

 the foot of Rongokako, one of their illustrious progenitors 



* Metrosideros robusta. 



