t 
357 
April 12. — Before breaking up I made some few purchases 
in Petania. From the chief I bought, for five shillings, after much 
parleying, a Moa leg-bone which he had carried for many years 
as a kind of club; I also en changed a red woollen blanket for a 
piece of New Zealand national costume , a beautiful flax-mantle, 
Tatara, such as were in former times universally worn, before 
woollen blankets were introduced. Now-a-days such garments are 
only to be found in the remoter parts of the interior, where there 
is as yet but little intercourse with Europeans. They are now but 
rarely manufactured, the rising generation being unacquainted with 
that useful art. The distance from Petania to Lake Taupo is esti- 
mated a two days’ journey. The road, however, is extremely 
difficult; it leads up and down from valley to valley, from moun- 
tain to mountain , across the ridges springing from the Tuhua-moun- 
tain in a southerly and southwesterly direction , and through dusky 
primeval forests. It traverses the sources of the Wanganui, and, 
ascending higher and higher, it finally reaches the watershed 
between the Wanganui and Lake Taupo. We were three whole 
days passing over this route. On the first day, after a most 
fatiguing passage through deep ravines cut into pumicestonc gravel, 
we crossed the Takaputiraha range (1534 feet high), and encamped 
on the left bank of the Pungapunga river upon a beautiful grass- 
plain, called te Patate, 897 feet above the level of the sea. 
April 13. — We had now to scale the Puketapu., This moun- 
tain is the most remarkable point on the road from Tuhua to Lake 
Taupo. The ascent is extremely steep. According to my baro- 
metrical observations the height of the mountain is to be estimated 
at 2073 feet. As the summit was covered only with young under- 
wood, I ordered the same to be cut down, and thus gained an 
interesting view of the sources of the Wanganui, over a sombre 
mountain-country and wood-landscape, in the back-ground of which 
the Kuapahu loomed up in all its majesty, its peak wrapt in 
clouds. Southwest of the Ruapahu another volcanic cone, 3000 feet 
high, was visible; it was pointed out to me as Haulianga. To the 
Northwest and West the Tuhua-mountain and the Hikurangi-cone 
