Big Canoes of Natives.

Memories, also, of the grand canoeing days. Happily the long dug-out canoe that fits in so well with these riverscapes is still numerous in Waikato's waters. I remember seeing fully fifty canoes of all kinds and sizes moored in the back-water of the Managawhara, which wanders into the Waikato at Taupiri, and alongside the bank in the main stream. This was at the great “wake” over King Tawhiao's body. Canoes 60ft. or 70ft. long, with a beam amidships of 4ft. or 5ft., are still to be seen here. Away down the river at Waahi lies the historic page 39 “Tahere-tikitiki,” a specimen of the decorated war-canoe, quite 80ft. in length. We used to see her manned by fifty men, kneeling two abreast, in great paddling races.

What pictures there must have been in the days when scores of war-canoes came sweeping along this great curve of waterway, the captains chants ringing like battle songs as the dripping blades flashed in the sun and dipped and flashed again! Sometimes when a number of the larger canoes are manned for races at the great annual holiday at Ngaruawahia, we may endeavour to recapture some idea of the perfect frenzy of old time that possessed the rival crews in a real war-canoe contest.

The shining river is still a line of demarcation, to a certain extent, between pakeha and Maori. Our train passes the military camp-ground at Hopu-hopu, the chief training place for the Territorials of the Auckland district. This is a permanent camp on a large scale, with an adequate area of land for manoeuvres and gunnery. On the opposite side of the smooth Waikato, polished as glass under this summer sun, are Maori cultivations, and we see now and again a brightly-garbed woman weeding her kumara-patch, now and again a single figure in the stern of a little kopapa plying a leisurely hoé, the broad-bladed paddle, making across-stream or up for the town and shops at Ngaruawahia.