The Pani-rau Rapids.

But not long are we left in peace. Round a bend and before us are the worst rapids on the river, the rushing Pani-rau or “Many Orphans.” The roaring of the waters comes down the gorge, and before us we see a long, crooked down-slant of foam, curling into little waves. Landslips of long ago have piled the river bed with a confused mass of rocks and logs, forming a zigzag of rapids some three hundred yards long. A fearful turmoil this gorge must be in flood-time.

Gripping hold of the slippery snags projecting from the water, and pushing with pole and paddle, we slowly mount the torrent foot by foot. As we near the top Piko jumps ashore from the bows, with the long painter, and tracks the canoe up, clambering along the shelving rocky bank like a wild goat. At last, with paddle-blistered hands and tired shoulders, and aching knees from long squatting in the paddler's position, we came to a little island at the great bend of the river, with the voice of many waters above and below, and went into camp for the night, making fast our canoe in a safe backwater.

Not even on the upper reaches of the Wanganui have I seen a wilder spot than that defile of the “Many Orphans.” Inconceivably solitary, palisaded by wooded ranges rising a thousand feet precipitously above us, rapids roaring below, and the ominous rumble of more rapids higher up, bidding us prepare for more strenuous work; the high crake of the weka in the bush—we heard the kiwi, too, that night; the gloomy tree-arched canyon on our right, where a tributary stream came stealing into the Mokau; the knowledge that we were the only human beings for many and many a mile around, and that the dugout canoe, swinging at the bank, was our only means of reaching the outside world—all these things created a sense of solitariness extreme. But the camp fire crackled, best of all friends in the wilds, and the comforting tea and fried bacon were ready, and when pipes and cigarettes came out and the jovial Hauraki was moved to spin a yarn quaintly humorous—humorous in the Maori sense—about the old Mokau days, it was cheerful on that lone log-piled islet where many a campfire of Maori warrior-bands had blazed in the long ago. The starry sky was our roof, but a narrow roof, the canyon walls rose in black shadow nearly a thousand feet on each side.

On the Upper Reaches.

Morning on Pani-rau! Glorious on the river, glory of early day on the mountains, as we push off again from our little island, and paddle up into the smooth reach above the grand bend where the Mokau crooks its elbow at a sharp angle in a magnificent forest gulch. The blue ranges lift tremendously above us, the Matuku-mai-uta and Matuku-mai-tai (“Bittern-from-Sea” and “Bittern - from - Inland”) shooting up on either side of the Pani-rau creek, like a knife-cut in the cliffs, and the Ranga-a-Waitara, a straight wall of a mountain, towering over the river on our right. The names of the Bittern Mountains carry a scrap of Maori exploring folk-lore; they were so named because the ancient canoeists camping on Pani-rau heard two doleful matukus calling to each other all night long across the Pani-rau canyon. As we open up the long reach in the Ranga-a-Waitara's shadow, the lights and shadows and tender tints of early morning are beautiful beyond imagining. A shimmer of mist is on the river; and a tablecloth of fog hangs from the range top. As the sun comes over the mountains, cliff and forest and river are suffused with the softest rosy light.

The mist veil melts away; the white forms of the Hau-maringiringi, the phantom figures of the fog drift into the deeper hollows; the mountains lift clear in the pearly light.

All that day we were hard at it with paddle and pole. In ten miles we tackled a rapid at every three-quarters of a mile, on an average. At one place the taheke bore an ill reputation. Two of the children of the King Country chief Tawhana were drowned here by the capsize of a canoe. On some of the higher mossy boulders, piharau or lampreys are often found after floods.

At last round the lovely Matai bend we come upon the first sign of civilisation, a lone pioneer settler's section, “Riddel's Clearing,” cut out of the bush on the northern side of the river. The banks are low now, with much kowhai shrubbery. In the calm reaches the river is smooth and shining, brimming to the woody shores, where the tawa tree and the miro pine grow tall. The half-cleared bush and fern lands of the King Country open out. A long thin column of smoke mounts lazily into the summer air. A slab hut looks out through the thickets.

Our camp this last night of the inland voyage is in a tall manuka grove. A touch of frost in the air, our feet towards a good fire of manuka—how its fragrance tingles in the nostrils even yet!—and there are yarns of fight and hunt and canoe-race on the river. Next morning we land at Kaiwaka, five miles further on, to ride over the hills to Te Kuiti and the railway. We call “Haere ra!” with much regret to good old Piko and Hauraki as they turn the bow of the canoe down stream. Our Maori friends cry their farewells. They bid us go on our journey. The long canoe glides round a bend, and just before it disappears the paddlers turn and lift their shining blades in good-bye, and next moment they vanish from our sight, for ever.