Where Waikato Flowed.

It is a wonderful geological story the Hinuera Valley has to tell, that ancient waterway along which one motors between Mata-mata station and the rail-head at Cambridge. It is a smooth-floored valley with vertical walls of columnar rock of volcanic origin, extending from about Horahora—where the hydro-electric works are—on the Waikato river above Cambridge, into the Upper Waihou Valley. It is easy to read the history of that strange valley (correctly it should be spelled Hinuwera), as revealed in its peculiar contour and its dark cave-riddled cliffy palisade. In past ages the Waikato river flowed through this gorge into the Upper Waihou and thence to the Hauraki Gulf.

This is but one of the chapters in Waikato's varied history. At a later period the western ranges, where Ngaruawahia now is, deflected it eastward over the Piako flats. The Manga-whara Creek, that sluggish stream you cross in the train at Taupiri station, indicates its ancient course before some convulsion of the earth opened for it a niche in the hills through

Waiareka Railway Junction, South Island, N.Z.
The interesting feature of this junction is that the railway line is several feet below the station buildings.

which it might force its way northward and westward to the Tasman Sea, and gave us that fine picture, the great bend between Ngaruawahia and Huntly.