Waikato's Wide Waters.

The strong river flowing so smoothly between its low banks fringed with weeping willows is a living embodiment of quiet force and power. Far away on its upper course it is a stream of fierce tremendous turmoil and water-strife. Here it has steadied down into a wide placid current a quarter of a mile wide; lower down it broadens out to half a mile, and its surface is broken with some large islands, and it floats good-sized steamers that work up as page 36 far as Hamilton and Cambridge towns. Coal ior the old-time river fleet was broken out of outerops near where Huntly Town stands today, and Cameron's gunboats found here convenient fuel supplies.

Across the shining waterway, just before we reach the town, an assemblage of pakeha and Maori buildings on the west bank catches the eye; and there is the typical native design meeting-house, with its low-slanting eaves and its frontal carvings; in front of it is a tall flag-staff. This is the Maori “royal” town of Waahi, headquarters of the Kingite Waikatos and their hereditary head, Rata Mahuta, the great-grandson of the first Maori king, the venerable Potatau te Wherowhero friend of Sir George Grey. Up-stream ten miles we shall see the place, Ngaruawahia, where that ancient warrior chief was made king by the assembled tribes in 1858.