The Way Through Maruia.

A road new to pleasure-travellers, although really a very ancient route, is that through the Maruia Valley between the east and west sides of the South Island. The Maruia—long noted for its hot mineral springs—and the Lewis Saddle traverse, were convenient, if hazardous ways of travel from the Buller and Grey regions through the mountains to the Mani-rauhea (“Plain of the Shining-Tussock”)—now Hanmer Plain—and so into North Canterbury. The earliest tourists were swag-carrying parties of pounamu or greenstone getters and raiding warriors, in the long ago, through a jumble of mountains and cliff and defile, with here and there a flat valley.