Through Ancient Volcano Land.

Now the Kaingaroa Plain edge across the river bumped itself up into mountains. Here was a savage volcano land, the dead yet thunderous nest of the fiery craters of old. The river dashed through an ancient explosion crater or a series of them. A vitreous cliff face opposite us glinted like obsidian; it was clearly the wall of an extinct volcano. It shone in the wet like the explosion pit-walls page 11 on Rainbow Mountain, away yonder on the other side of the Kaingaroa.

A truculent corner, this canyon, it threatened us with its overhanging cliffs and its raving waters. The buttresses of east and west seemed to menace each other; they would have plunged into a battle of the rocks but for this river that pushed masterfully between them. A long waterfall poured over the volcano brim opposite our road, from one of those knife-cut fissures in the eastern wall of the Kaingaroa.