448 
On the 15. May an easterly gale blowing and the rain pouring 
down in torrents, we were obliged to keep within our tents all 
day. It was not until evening that the sky cleared off. 
The 16. May was bright and warm as a spring- day. The 
preparations, however, which my Maoris were making for our to- 
day’s journey, packing shoes and trowsers into their bundles, led 
me to suppose, that despite the delightful weather we should have 
enough to do with water. We advanced in a westerly direction 
towards the Maungatautari mountain, an old acquaintance from the 
Middle Waikato Basin. The beginning of the road was tolerably 
good. It lay partly over low fern -hills, partly over grassy plains, 
the pumicestonc-soil and the grass - vegetation reminding us of the 
terraced country about Lake Taupo. Towards South a white cloud 
was seen, which could be no other than a steam -cloud ascending 
from the Tongariro, although the volcanic cone itself was not visible. 
Judging from the colossal dimensions of the cloud, the crater seemed 
to-day to be in an extraordinary state of activity. We crossed the 
tributaries of the Waiho coming from the Patetere plateau, first the 
Rapurapu river, then the Waiomau, and six miles from Whatiwhati 
we struck the Waiho itself. 1 The river, which sixty miles farther 
North empties into the Hauraki-Gulf, bearing the proud name of 
the New Zealand Thames , which already Captain Cook gave the 
stream, is here, near its source in the Patetere plateau, only a 
small creek six to eight feet wide , which has cut its bed thirty to 
forty feet deep into the soft pumicestone -banks. A suspension- 
bridge most curiously constructed of branches leads across. The 
.Maori geographers, however, seem to have taken an unusual liberty 
in this case; for scarcely two miles from the Waiho the traveller 
comes to a large rapid stream, running in a broad river-bed, which 
empties into the Waiho and beat’s the name of Oraka; this is evi- 
dently the main-river. From the Waiho to the Mangawliero, the 
last tributary of the Waiho — a distance of three miles — we were 
obliged to wade almost without interruption in stagnating water, 
1 According to t lie pronunciation of the natives the name ought to be written 
Waihou. 
