Remnants of the Great Woods.

The railway traveller sees something of those ferny glories, and the eye is solaced by the varied tints of green that softly paint the wooded country through which the train climbs from Ngatira and Arahiwi to the Mamaku Station, 1,888 feet, the highest point on the Rotorua railway. The mountain rimu or red-pine, is the principal large tree in this forest; there are rata, too, of great size. But the bush, rich as it is, the only bit of indigenous forest on the line, is only a tattered fragment of the grand forest through which the way for the line was cut, nearly forty years ago.

The native forest in those days was regarded more as an encumbrance than anything else; the great idea was to cut it out and burn what could not be milled. It was only with difficulty that the powers of State were persuaded to save a fringe of it along the rail line.