The Heart of the Island.

Taumarunui (175 miles) was not so long ago the most remote, most secluded corner of the North Island, the very wildest quarter of the King Country. Geographically and politically it was as important a place in Maoridom as it is to-day in the chain of our inland communications. It was a meeting-place of tribes; it was a great council-place and war-route in other days, and a starting point for long expeditions to the outer world by river and bush trail. Surrounded by wooded ranges, this quiet spot at the meeting of the waters is well described by its name, which means “Great shelter,” or “Place of abundant shade.” It remained untroubled by the restless tide of pakeha trade longer than other parts of the interior. In 1900, before the iron rail from the north had reached it, it was a Mairo kainga of the olden time, with but one solitary white man, Alexander Bell, who had settled here in 1874 and married a chief's daughter.

Mr. Bell was the people's trader and interpreter and general agent in any transactions with the pakeha. He had been soldier and sailor, and this quiet bush retreat seemed to him the most desirable nook in the world after his long wanderings. When I first met him in Taumarunui's thatched whare days, he lived in a neat little cottage of pit-sawn timber by an orchard on the Ongarue banks yonder, and he had a little trading-store. At the time of writing he was still living in a greatly transformed Taumarunui, lamenting the change which had come over the Maori valley.

The rise of Taumarunui from the Maori kainga stage to a modern well-furnished town has been more rapid than that of any other King Country centre. The alluvial flat at the junction of the Wanganui and Ongarue, where once we heard the tui's song as we wakened in our camp beneath the rimu-wooded hillside, and where potato and maize cultivations spread over the levels, each little field enclosed by a pig-proof fence of closely-wattled manuka, is now covered with the dwellings and business places and churches, gardens, and lawns of a busy and wealthy provincial town. Here travellers bound down the Wanganui River leave the railway and embark on shallow-draught craft, preferably a long Maori canoe with plank topsides or washboards, prolled by an oil-engine-driven page 39 screw. This solid dug-out canoe is the safest type of hull for the upper parts of this river of many rapids. The voyage from here to Pipiriki is eighty miles, and to Wanganui Town 139 miles.