The Gulches in the Bush.

Te Toto, Te Uhi, Manurewa; those are the more remarkable of the ravines that your train crosses so easily to-day, and that gave the rail-builders such brain and muscle work in the pioneer years.

Te Toto—sinister name; it means a place of bloodshed. Along this ravine the scattered Hauhaus ran, wildly seeking a place where they could climb to safety, back in 1867, when the Government forces chased them out of the Arawa country.

Te Uhi you cross further on, as you go down from Mamaku station to Tarukenga; the name means “The Chisel,” and indeed it looks as if some giant navvies of Maori fairydom had gouged it out, for pure devilment, to obstruct the pakeha line-makers. Its sides are precipitous, quite vertical in most places; it is eighty or a hundred feet deep; the cliff-tops are jungly with trees and creepers and ferns; “monkey-ropes”—aka vines of the Maori—trail over the edges. In the bottom of the ravine there should be a beautiful cascading stream, if this were not such a freakish bit of country.

Then, a little way before Tarukenga is reached, the train rumbles across the lower end of the Manurewa Gorge—the “Soaring Bird.” This name is an allusion to the often-observed habit of the tui, plentiful in these parts. When it is making for its nest, it soars into the air for a considerable height, then drops straight down to it like a diver. As for the name Tarukenga it means “Slaughter”; it holds a tale of battlefield and “long pig.”