The Keepers of Boiling-water Glen.

There was, in the days of the past, a guardian of this wizardly wound on the face of Nature that perfectly fitted the place. She was the venerable Arihi Takurua, who with her old-soldier husband, Paddy McCrory—they both died some years ago—lived here fully half a century, and guided visitors about the place. The greater part of their lives was spent in this uncanny corner. Very bent, almost a hunchback, with a coloured shawl about her grey head and tattooed face, keen bright eyes peering out, she looked a witch of the enchanted valley, as she came out to meet the travellers, grasping in her long talon-like fingers a spear-headed walking staff.

But Arihi of Tikitere really was a pleasant and kindly old dame, and the capital cup of tea she could produce for her fleeting paying guests was no witch's brew, though the kettle was boiled in one of wild Nature's stoves, a plopping and gurgling steam-vent.

Arihi, too, was a kindly nurse to many a crippled sufferer who camped here to bathe in the open, in the healing hot waters of Muriwai, the little dark stream that carries off the mineralised drainings of the thermal valley.

The name Arihi, by the way, is Alice, Maorified; it was given her in her girlhood by the missionary, Thomas Chapman, and his wife, whose station was at Te Ngae, down yonder overlooking the east shore of Rotorua lake.