wind was favourable; by 11 o’clock already we had reached our 
place of destination, and the “Sea Belle” lay before Waiuku; not, 
however, ^s one might suppose, at anchor, but, as the captain 
had deemed it the far simpler way of disposing of her, fast aground 
in the mud. There she is lying perhaps up to this day, rotten 
and decayed. 
Waiuku, — the word is a compound of wai , water, and uku, 
white clay, — is a very appropriate name for the place. It is 
the name of the creek, which, in a southerly direction from Manu- 
kau Basin cuts deeply into the land ; and the low banks ot whose 
shores are formed of white clay and sand, below which, just at 
the water’s edge, layers of peat-like lignite, in a thickness of 
several feet, crop out. These are the same post-tertiary strata, 
which reappear farther to the North West in the creeks at Drury 
and Papakura, and which compose the extensive flats on the 
East and South-side of the Manukau. Where the white clay 
forms the surface, there the land is "sadly sterile. Luckily, how- 
ever, the clay is covered to a large extent by basaltic conglome- 
rate , the gradual decomposition of which furnishes a fertile, 
arable earth. 
At the South-end of Waiuku Creek a cluster of houses, among 
which several mercantile shops and two taverns , presents the first 
start of the town of Waiuku; William’s Hotel formed our head- 
quarters. Though its environs can boast only few points of attraction, 
yet, the site of the place is an interesting one, lying as it does 
on the great thoroughfare of the natives from North to South, upon 
a kind of isthmus, which separates the Manukau Basin from the 
largest navigable river of the North Island, the Waikato. Between 
the upper end of Waiuku Creek, and Awaroa Creek 1 emptying 
into the Waikato River, there intervenes only a fiat ridge P/2 miles 
wide, and not above 40 to 50 feet high, over which a brisk trade 
is continually carried on; because upon this road the natives bring 
their produces from the fertile Waikato valley, the granary of the 
North Island, to Manukau Harbour. It has, therefore, also been 
1 Waikato = streaming water; Awaroa ~ long water course. 
