The Pani-rau Rapids.

But not long are we left in peace. Round a bend and before us are the worst rapids on the river, the rushing Pani-rau or “Many Orphans.” The roaring of the waters comes down the gorge, and before us we see a long, crooked down-slant of foam, curling into little waves. Landslips of long ago have piled the river bed with a confused mass of rocks and logs, forming a zigzag of rapids some three hundred yards long. A fearful turmoil this gorge must be in flood-time.

Gripping hold of the slippery snags projecting from the water, and pushing with pole and paddle, we slowly mount the torrent foot by foot. As we near the top Piko jumps ashore from the bows, with the long painter, and tracks the canoe up, clambering along the shelving rocky bank like a wild goat. At last, with paddle-blistered hands and tired shoulders, and aching knees from long squatting in the paddler's position, we came to a little island at the great bend of the river, with the voice of many waters above and below, and went into camp for the night, making fast our canoe in a safe backwater.

Not even on the upper reaches of the Wanganui have I seen a wilder spot than that defile of the “Many Orphans.” Inconceivably solitary, palisaded by wooded ranges rising a thousand feet precipitously above us, rapids roaring below, and the ominous rumble of more rapids higher up, bidding us prepare for more strenuous work; the high crake of the weka in the bush—we heard the kiwi, too, that night; the gloomy tree-arched canyon on our right, where a tributary stream came stealing into the Mokau; the knowledge that we were the only human beings for many and many a mile around, and that the dugout canoe, swinging at the bank, was our only means of reaching the outside world—all these things created a sense of solitariness extreme. But the camp fire crackled, best of all friends in the wilds, and the comforting tea and fried bacon were ready, and when pipes and cigarettes came out and the jovial Hauraki was moved to spin a yarn quaintly humorous—humorous in the Maori sense—about the old Mokau days, it was cheerful on that lone log-piled islet where many a campfire of Maori warrior-bands had blazed in the long ago. The starry sky was our roof, but a narrow roof, the canyon walls rose in black shadow nearly a thousand feet on each side.