The Perfect Paddle.

The heaviness of our waka Maori sets us longing for the Canadian cedar or the Indian birchbark, though I know that nothing but a solid dug-out like ours would survive the Mokau snags. The steady dip of our four paddles goes on mile after mile. Harder work than rowing this, for all the strain comes on the shoulders and arms; there is no leg-work to help, as with an oar. The shoulders and back, in place of rowlocks, are the fulcrum. But there is the advantage that we face ahead and can see where we are going; and there is something in the very feel of a paddle that makes the toil a pleasure. A well-made Maori hoe is a beautiful thing. Mine is perfectly balanced, with just the right crook of the handle and the right—very slight—degree of elasticity in the blade. It is a wide-bladed paddle of hill-manuka, with the markings and veinings in its grain that the Maoris call pipi-wharauroa, because they remind them of the plumage of the shining cuckoo.

Little stories of old Maori days came from Piko and Hauraki, as we worked leisurely along. Often enquiry as to a place-name brought out some war-tale, some incident of the cannibal or the missionary era, sometimes a song or a local proverbial expression. At the nightly camp-fire such stories were amplified, and many a chant and many a poetic or barbaric tradition was noted down from the lips of men whose lives from childhood had been passed on the river and in the wild woods.

A deserted sawmill fifteen miles from Mokau township was our camping-place for the first night. Our long canoe swung to the sucking current at the landing-place. The morepork called to us, all night long, as was fitting considering the name of this lonely spot—Puke-ruru, which means “The Hill of the Bush-owl.”