218 
Memoranda of an Excursion 
main-land, their roots and trunks being often laved with the 
flowing tide. The wood of this tree is exceedingly hard, 
close grained, and heavy; and is much in request for knees 
in ship and boat building. It invariably inhabits the imme¬ 
diate sea-shore, often grotesquely hanging in an almost pen¬ 
dant manner from rocky cliffs and headlands, and, although 
of irregular growth, attains a large size. Here, in a clayey 
rock near high-water mark, the natives shew the impression 
of the foot of Rongokako, one of their illustrious progenitors; 
the print of his other foot, made in striding hence, being near 
Poverty Bay, a distance of more than fifty miles! Many 
marvellous exploits are related of this celebrated personage. 4 * 
Near the East Cape I discovered, on a little sandy plain, a 
species of Veronica, a rambling shrub with large oblong 
leaves, which to me was quite new. I did not, as on my 
former visit, go round the cape (a bold and high promontory 
composed of indurated clay, reclining back in solemn gran¬ 
deur, on the face of which, from the continual descent of 
debris from its summit and sides, nothing grows), it being 
nearly high-water; but, striking inland through a narrow 
sandy defile, emerged beyond it to the beach. The natives 
call this promontory Otiki; and the little islet off it, about 
half-a-mile from the shore, Te Wangaokeno. Rain coming 
on, I was quite willing to halt at Te Pito, a small village at 
the end of the long beach I had just passed, three miles S. 
of the East Cape. Here, however, on the side of a very 
steep hill, open to the South Pacific, which rolled its immea- 
* It is, perhaps, worthy of remark, en passant, that such supposed 
impressions of footsteps arc to be found in all countries. The writer has 
seen one in Cornwall, on the summit of a perpendicular and lofty crag, 
gravely asserted to he the last impress of Ids Satanic Majesty ! None, 
however, has attained such celebrity as that on the summit of Adam’s 
Peak, in Ceylon, of which a modern traveller states—“ Boodhoo, when 
one foot rested on the Srce Pada (Adam’s Peak), and left its impression 
there, stepped across to Makoona, situated, the priest gravely and se¬ 
riously assured me, in Siam ' 1” 
