CHAr. Vni. ITS NATURE AND EXTENT^.'. 219 
whole journey, and lying on the damp ground every 
night exposed to heavy rains, with the^ scantiest co- 
vering, not a single member of the party, however, 
/suffered any injury to his health ; and after a few days' 
good feeding at Wellington, natives and White men 
were all as fresh and hearty as ever. 
Mr. Kettle's expedition was of great importance, as 
proving that an immense district of land of the finest 
character lay in the immediate neighbourhood of Wel- 
lington, and must eventually be dependent on the 
harbour of Port Nicholson for import and export. 
It had the advantage of being almost unoccupied ; 
the population of the solitary pa being very small, 
while another scanty tribe lived entirely on the 
narrow strip of land between Lake IV^airarapa and 
the sea. 
Mr. Kettle described the plain of Ruamahanga as 
resembling in appearance a vast English park on a 
magnified scale. Alternate tracts of the finest pri- 
maeval forest, and of pasture-land covered with mixed 
fern and grass and small shrubs, lay between the 
numerous streams which are tributary to the Ruama- 
hanga river. 
We knew already, since the bridle-road had been 
made, how easy was the communication, both by land 
and by sea, with the tract of level land bordering on 
Cook's Strait, and extending towards Mokau. And it 
was foreseen that no insurmountable obstacle existed to 
the formation of roads from the Hutt, over the Rimu- 
taka range, into the plain of the Ruamahanga. To 
complete the compactness of the district surrounding 
the little mountainous tract in which lie Port Nichol- 
son and the valley of the Hutt on all sides but the 
south, the communication between the eastern and 
western plains was established by the Manawatu to 
