T U T I R A. 



CHAPTER I. 



TUTIRA ITS PROMINENT PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



TUTIRA STATION is situated in the Hawke's Bay province of the North 

 Island of New Zealand. The homestead itself lies a few miles inland 

 midway between the ports of Napier and Wairoa. Tutira proper extends 

 over 20,000 acres about one-third of the size of the lands to be 

 described ; lands which have at one time or another been occupied by 

 the writer. The larger area is bounded by three considerable rivers. 

 The largest, rising in the interior of the North Island, flows along the 

 base of the Maungaharuru range, eventually reaching the sea twenty 

 miles north of the run. There may be here and there a crossing to 

 this deep, swift, and dangerous river. I know of none. Another 

 river, running from source to sea between cliffs, is impassable except 

 where crossings have been constructed in modern times. The third, 

 rising on the high lands of inland Tutira, is crossable at the old pack- 

 horse ford, where in the 'nineties a " cage " on wires was slung for the 

 convenience of degenerate modern wayfarers, and where in still more 

 recent times, for still more degenerate travellers, a bridge has been 

 thrown across the river. There is another ford nearer the sea where the 

 ancient Maori foot-trail passed inland, otherwise this stream also was 

 practically uncrossable until beyond the Tutira boundary. 



To account for the external configuration of the run and for the 

 material of which it is built, vast general changes over the whole east 

 coast of the North Island over the whole of New Zealand indeed would 

 have to be considered. For such a review the writer lacks both 



A 



