At the Rail-End.

Taneatua, at the terminus of the Bay of Plenty railway line, calls for attention this coming summer, all being well, as a pleasuring centre, aside from its importance as a business town. For one thing, it lies near the entrance to one of the great passes into the Urewera Country, the Whakatane Gorge. It is a wonderful change from the far-stretching plains of grass and maize to ride up that range-walled valley, crossing and recrossing the broad shallow river, and every now and again passing into the cool and scented forest. Two days' easy ride, camping on the way in one of the clearings, such as the old Urewera village at Waikariwhenua, takes one into Ruatahuna, and another leisurely day to Maungapohatu, made famous as the headquarters of the prophet Rua. That is one of the byways in from the plains at Ruatoki, the large Maori settlement just beyond Taneatua; and there are others. By the way, it is a tempting sight, the big trout lying in the sun-warmed shallows at the Whakatane gravelly fords. Of course, you always see them when you haven't got your rod! But the lads and lasses of the kainga don't trouble about orthodox tackle or the opening of the season. They get their trout in eel-baskets.

Whakatane port, in the other direction, a half-hour run from Taneatua station, is really the most interesting little town along the Bay of Plenty, with its bold rampart of dark-grey cliff walling in the flat on which the place is built, and its tall Pohaturoa rock standing sentry at the entrance like a gigantic policeman directing the traffic right and left. It is a curious place to explore, the top of that wall, where the great pohutukawa trees grow in the trenches of ancient fortifications, the castles of old-time page 43 tribes. Up inland, again, there is a particularly pretty—and exceedingly crooked—driving road on towards Ohiwa and Opotiki, through the Wainui-te-whara Valley, a wooded gorge ablaze with flowers in the season of bush blossoms. The usual traffic route from Taneatua station to Opotiki leaves the plain by way of the Waimana Valley, but this Wainui Road, which cuts into the hills by a narrow little pass three miles or so from Whakatane town, is worth the travelling for the variety of its bush and hill scenery. In fact, should one visit Opotiki from the rail-head, it is a wise plan to make a round trip of it over the Whakatane-Ohiwa section, going one way and returning the other.