High up in the papa-walled gorge of the Wanganui River, the powerful stream came rolling and roaring down between its straight cliffs, kiekie-fringed and tree-feathered, in a tremendous yellow volume, twenty feet and more above its normal level. The great rains were on; the old hands of Pipiriki, white and Maori, remembered scarcely a wetter season. For nearly a week it had been pouring down steadily, and every tributary creek was a torrent, sending down a furious sluice to swell the main streams and make navigation a matter of difficulty along more than a hundred miles of waterway. Here, at Pipiriki, very nearly sixty miles from the sea, the landing jetty was under water, and the powerful little steamer that carried passengers and goods along this section of the Wanganui tied up well inside and high above her usual berth. The sight of the swollen river, plunging down through its deep valley, was sufficiently wild from the Pipiriki terrace; wilder still was its aspect at very close quarters next day when we set off up-stream through the canyon country to the Maori village of Parinui. Our steamboat was a shallow-draught screw craft specially designed for the hard work of mid-Wanganui navigation. A curious feature about her was the two big rudders she wore, wide apparently out of all proportion to her size; the pair were necessary in this navigation of rough waters.

A Beautiful Scenic Waterway.
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
The Houseboat on the Wanganui River, North Island, New Zealand.

One Long Rapid.

I had voyaged down the Wanganui from Taumarunui to the sea in beauteous summer weather, and delighted in the sunny loveliness of it all, and the amazing succession of reflections in the brown mirror-waters as we sped down the calm reaches in that pakeha-Maori craft, a large dug-out canoe with topsides fastened on, and a motor and screw to kick her along. I had paddled about Pipiriki and the old villages there in a smaller waka with greybeard Re-one, a veteran of the river wars.

This time I saw the “Wai-nui-a-Tarawera” — an ancient name of the Wanganui—in a different temper. The successive shallows and rapids had disappeared, covered deeply by the great flood, and the river was in fact one long yellow rapid, against which our struggling steamboat could scarcely make headway in the narrower and swifter runs.

Sometimes we seemed to measure our upstream progress by inches, crawling up with every pound of steam the boilers could safely bear, against a current that threatened often to send us smashing against the perpendicular walls of the canyon.

The Wanganui's Palisades.

For this is a true canyon, that section of the Wanganui extending for some forty miles above Pipiriki. The Maoris call it Te Wahi Pari, “The Place of Cliffs.” This immense “pari” region, cut through by some ancient earthquake or volcanic convulsions in a rift that made a drain-way for the wild mountain land, is the most rugged part of the southern half of the North Island; its only rival for boldness of contour is the Urewera mountain country. Absolutely they are walls in many parts of this mid-section of the river, for they rise up to great heights as straightly as the sides of a pile of masonry in a city.

“Far away from town and tower.”—Thomas Bracken.
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
A camping party on the bank of the Wanganui River, North Island, New Zealand.

The vertical faces of the coloured papa rock, flood-worn, mossy, kiekie-grown, go up for a hundred to two and three hundred feet, and behind them again the wooded ranges slope up into blue and mist-shrouded peaks. Here and there are slopes, formed by landslides in just such floods as this, or perhaps by earthquake, and on these slopes great forest trees grow in a dense and fragrant forest—the rimu, the rata, the beech or tawai.

In spring I had seen these cliffs and slopes a glory of flowers, when the snowy clematis starred the bushes and trailed along the lower branches of the tall timbers, and when the kowhai's gold emblazoned the banks for miles. Now the flowers had gone, but the glory of the ferns remained; ferns of all degree, from the korau and ponga, with their high slender trunks and their feathery cascades of frondage, to the lycopodium that broidered the rocks, and the bedewed filmy ferns that trembled on the cliff-sides.

Shaggy Walls of Foliage.

Now the flowers had gone; everything was the most vivid wet green, in various shadings from the light green of the fern trees to the deep tintings of the high timber. The water was up over the tops of some of the lower trees and the sharp-pointed curving blades of the kiekie, like mountain flax, were swishing in the discoloured river. It is greener still, this Wanganui, when the floods have subsided and the water is clear; the tints of the wooded cliffs and slopes are so reflected in the river that the bottom of the canyons seems a smooth floor of foliage, with maybe a narrow strip of sky blue in the middle of it.

A Land of Waterfalls.

Though the high river was so muddied, the rains gave the canyon a new and wonderful beauty. From every niche in the cliffs and from every hanging valley poured a waterfall. There were cascades everywhere the two days we steamed up to Parinui and back to Pipiriki. Some leaped from rock to rock down dark page 27 glens, some plunged out of deep tunnels of foliage, others came down in a single graceful spout from the very top of a mossy precipice, a flash of living white against the unfading green of the rimu and rata and the cliff-climbing ferntrees.

Caves of Legend.

Sometimes we have glimpses into caves in the cliffs, overhung by drooping ferns and trailing forest-creepers and the ever-present bunches of hanging kiekic. Ruru-popo is one of these caves, a deep dark cavern on the riverside, proper right bank.

“This is a vision for the rest of life.”—Robert Patterson.
(Govt. Publicity photo.)
The enchanting “Drop Scene” on the world-famed Wanganui River, North Island, New Zealand.

Another cave on this same side is Puraroto, where once upon a time, according to Reone's legends, a fearsome taniwha, or man-devouring monster, had lived.

Yet another cave is a picture to entrance the eye and excite the imagination. It is on the east, or left bank, nearly opposite the Puraroto cave and stream. At the foot of a horseshoeshaped indent or recess in the precipice there is a little level spit, densely grown with plumey ferntrees, and behind is the ana, the cave. Over the rocky front of the cave fall two cascades, twin fountains of silver leaping out from unseen streams.

This singularly lovely spot—albeit an uncomfortably damp one— is called Tu-ka-iriao. It was one of the dwelling places of a small Maori tribe long ago. The rivermen's stockaded pa was on a terrace far above, and to this terrace the people climbed by rough ladders made of the vines of the aka, a tough forest creeper.

In many places along this Place of Cliffs such bush ladders were the only means of reaching the villages. When enemies essayed to scale this precipice the Tu-ka-iriao men cut the aka, and then there were broken heads and limbs among the invaders.

Also, the warriors of this wild gorge camped in the cave on the look-out for intruders poling up the rapids, and the encounter was usually disastrous to the strangers.

Very few invaders got any satisfaction out of fighting the ambuscade-loving Whanganui and Ngati-Hau.

A local proverbial expression, Te Koura putaroa, likens the river tribes to a crayfish, which could always escape its strong foes by retreating into the caves between the cliffs and up the deep defiles, or pounce upon weak ones with its nipping claws. In the Mangaio gorge up yonder, in the narrowest part, where a swift creek comes out of a deep gloomy defile, a war-canoe expedition, under the Northern chief Tuwhare was almost annihilated, a little over a century ago, by the river tribes who gathered here and page 28 rolled rocks and logs down on the canoe crews as they slowly poled up close under the perpendicular papa walls.

Parinui, a Hill-top Kainga.

In the heart of this formidable river land we tied up to the right or west bank and climbed a steep hill to the largest village in the Wahi Pari, a kainga appropriately called Pari-nui (“Great Cliff”), the headquarters of the Ngati-Ruru, the “Bush-Owls” tribe. They certainly have a secluded home, these human moreporks. The village stands on the hilltop, like an eagle's nest; it is quite 300 feet above the river. So stood most of the healthily-set and easily defended pas of old. This very site was indeed a fortified place in other days. Now the crest of the hill, a space about three hundred yards long and a quarter of that width, has been levelled off to form the marae. At one end of this village assembly ground is the carved meeting-house; at the other end are the dwellings of the principal local people; on one side, on the brink of the steep slope, is a long tent-house for visitors; at the opposite side to that is the dining-hall, with the cooking quarters close handy. A tall flagstaff stands in the middle of the marae. At the back of the hill, convenient to the cooks’ quarters, runs the village water-supply, a clear stream of good water flowing through a gully about thirty feet below the level of the marae. From a well alongside this stream the water was obtained by an ingenious method, borrowed from the pakeha.

“Where the white-haired cataract booms.”
(Photo, E. D. Burt.).
The Huka Falls, Waikato River, North Island, New Zealand.

A wire rope from a post at the kitchen door runs to another at the well below, and along this rope the buckets of water, filled by a lad at the well, are drawn up by means of a travelling block and a light hauling line.

High, well-drained, well-built, and with a good water supply, Parinui is quite a model Maori village. But when we saw it first that season of the big rains it was muddy beyond description. The guests—it was a political meeting—sat wrapped in rugs in the meeting-house. I found the Chief of the place, Te Uira-Tu-ki-te-rangi (“The Lightning in the Sky”) lying in a tent at one end of the marae in a gloomy, most disconsolate mood.

Down the Mad River.

We lay at our ease and watched the wonderful moving picture of the green-banked Wanganui reeled off as we flew along on the top of the flood. It was a thrilling run down stream to Pipiriki, less than an hour, as against three hours coming up. Sometimes we were within half-a-dozen feet of the straight-carved cliffs, lifting for hundreds of feet above the sucking whirlpools. Sometimes the over-stretching trees left broken-off lower branches strewed over our awning and on our deck. Up yonder, one thought, it would be a glorious life in Parinui on the mountain-top when the grand sunny weather came.