8 New Zealand Institute. 



comforts and luxuries of civilized life over the now louely lakes. I thought 

 of the speech of Longfellow's Ked Indian Chief, Hiawatha : — 



' ' I beheld too in that vision 

 All the secrets of the future, 

 Of the distant days that shall be. 

 I beheld the westward marches 

 Of the unknown, crowded, nations. 

 All the land was full of people, 

 Eestless, struggling, toiling, strivings 

 Speaking many tongues, yet feeling 

 But one heart-beat in their bosoms. 

 In the woodlands rang their axes. 

 Smoked their towns in all the valleys ; 

 Over all the lakes and rivers 

 Rushed their great canoes of thunder. "* 



A very remarkable feature in this region of transcendent interest, is the 

 Volcanic plateau, of which Tongariro and Ruapehu are the main summits, for 

 it forms a central watershed from which the five chief rivers of this Island 

 flow down in their several courses to the sea. Here, within a space of a few 

 miles, are the sources of the Waikato, the Mangawhero, the Wangaehu, the 

 Turakina, and the Rangitikei.f While riding in the shadow of Tongariro, I 

 was forcibly reminded of my early travels in Eastern Europe, and of my visit, 

 in 1849, to the famous Pass and Mountain of Lacmosj in the range of Pindus, 

 between Thessaly and Epirus ; whence issue the five principal rivers of 

 Northern Greece, viz., the Aous, the Peneus, the Arachthus, the Haliacmon, 

 and the Achelous. This is one of the many geographical parallels between 

 Greece and New Zealand which must strike every classical scholar who has 

 travelled in both countries. It has been said that the stirring scene presented 

 under the dome of St. Paul's on the day of the National Thanksgiving in last 

 February has indefinitely postponed the advent of Macaulay's New Zealander 

 to sketch the ruins of the cathedral from a broken arch of London Bridge ; 

 but, perhaps, it is not too much to hope that meanwhile there may arise in 

 New Zealand a poet who will paint of the great mountain reservoir of this 

 Island a word-picture, not altogether unworthy to be compared with that 

 noble and original picture which Yirgil, in his Fourth Georgic, has drawn of 

 the vast subterranean grotto at the source of the Peneus, in which Aristseus 

 was welcomed by Cyrene, his goddes-mother, and by her train of nymphs ; 



* Longfellow's "Hiawatha," xxi. 

 + These streams, and the country on their banks, are described in the fourth volume 

 of the Transactions of the Institute (now under review), pages 128-135, in an article 

 "On the Geographical and other Features of some little know^n portions of the Province 

 Wellington."— By Mr. H. C. Field. 



J Now called Zygos. — See Leake's "Northern Greece," chap, ix. 



