One Long Rapid.

I had voyaged down the Wanganui from Taumarunui to the sea in beauteous summer weather, and delighted in the sunny loveliness of it all, and the amazing succession of reflections in the brown mirror-waters as we sped down the calm reaches in that pakeha-Maori craft, a large dug-out canoe with topsides fastened on, and a motor and screw to kick her along. I had paddled about Pipiriki and the old villages there in a smaller waka with greybeard Re-one, a veteran of the river wars.

This time I saw the “Wai-nui-a-Tarawera” — an ancient name of the Wanganui—in a different temper. The successive shallows and rapids had disappeared, covered deeply by the great flood, and the river was in fact one long yellow rapid, against which our struggling steamboat could scarcely make headway in the narrower and swifter runs.

Sometimes we seemed to measure our upstream progress by inches, crawling up with every pound of steam the boilers could safely bear, against a current that threatened often to send us smashing against the perpendicular walls of the canyon.