Over the Range to Kawhia.

A ride to Kawhia through the King Country from Otorohanga and thereabouts was a cruise of freedom and peculiar pleasure in the old horseback days. We could take cuts through lonely and pretty little valleys, and past the smallest of Maori kaingas, just groups of two or three whares—sometimes only one—on the banks of quiet eel-creeks.

Castle rocks of weathered limestone outcrop in thousands of places, taking all kinds of strange forms. This is the Cave Country, and there are freakish streams which sometimes take it into their heads to duck down and run underground for a mile or two.

On one of our rides we crossed Hikurangi hill before reaching View-of-Kawhia. This is a famous place; it was Tawhiao's great camp before he and his many hundreds of followers shifted down the valley to Whatiwhatihoe. The track went through the broken-down parapet that once sheltered the Ahurewa (the altar), as the sacred praying-house of the Kingite Hauhaus was called. Here Sir George Grey, when Premier, had a conference with the big men of the King Country, in the late 'Seventies.