Pictures and Place Names.

The Matata railway station is half-a-mile out of the township, between a 300ft. vertical cliff and the sea. There is a good deal to interest one in this old Pakeha-Maori settlement, with its green slopes, its tree-groves, its native village with a fine carved house; out yonder, beyond the “lazy locked lagoon,” the surf-beaten sandhills, White Island's steam cloud ever on the horizon, and the Rurima Rocks, like the teeth of some gigantic mako-taniwha shark.

Three little streams, clear and rapid, flow through the township; they are the Wai-te-puru, the Waimeha, and the Waitarariki. On the long rampart of cliffs in the rear there are huge earthworks, long-silent homes of the ancient tribes. Great pohutukawa trees grow out of the trenches, and within the line of the parapets, as we can observe even from the railway.

There must have been a great population along all this pleasant, fruitful, fish-teeming coast, centuries ago.

Old Hapimana, of Matata village, told many a story of the olden days as we travelled along the Kaokaoroa one day. Old place-names, full of poetry and legend, came from his lips as we passed over the Long Rib battlefield and viewed the Pari-a-Tamahuka.

Yonder dark pool in the cliff-palisaded gully, where a stream swirled in pulsing eddies, awhile before coming out across our path, was the Rua-Taniwha, the “Dragon's Cave.” Puakowhai stream, already mentioned, is typical of many a nature-name; it was so called after the lovely blossoms of the kowhai, which made a golden glow on its waters in the spring of the year.