where we found several houses for provisions, which are always built on posts to guard against the rats, and also two other houses. A thick forest surrounded this place on all sides. The plantations of potatoes, all belonging to Tangutu, and planted with his own hands, were in tolerably good order. There was no want of provisions; and pigeons, potatoes, leeks, taro, cabbage, turnips, were all at our command. Before it was quite dark flights of owls passed over our encampment, shrieking in a dismal manner, and alighted for a moment on one of the dead trees at the skirt of the forest, to watch with a stupid curiosity what was going on below; but they soon became quiet, with the rest of the inhabitants of the forest.

Before sunrise on the 4th of December, the thermometer stood at 44°. We took an east-south-east direction, and after descending the hill, we had to pass a large creek flowing to the eastward. Our road lay over gently undulating hills, which were covered with a dense forest. The cabbage-palms were the highest I ever saw. We passed several other streams, and at noon halted at another plantation belonging to our guide. He rested here during the day, to arrange our provisions for the continuance of the journey. This field was situated at the side of a river, which rolled over a pebbly and rocky bed, and was canopied by the trees on its banks. From the high tawai trees a graceful moss hung down in long festoons. The temperature here at noon was 91° in the sun, and 72° in the shade, and I found the heat very oppressive.

I could not prevail upon Tangutu to start the next morning, as this was his last plantation. The sky was overcast, and he said that the weather would be bad for several days. Pouring rain lasted this and the following day. On the afternoon of the 7th, the weather having

somewhat cleared up, we started, but had not proceeded far before the rain again compelled us to halt. It must be observed that travelling through the bush in New Zealand is rather a scrambling affair; and with a load is very fatiguing, and cannot be kept up for a long time. Fifteen miles I considered a very good day's work, even in the open parts of the country. We took up our quarters under the shelter of a rata tree.

On the eighth we several times crossed the Mangorake. Its banks are steep, and from one of them Tangutu dug out a titi, or mutton-bird. These birds come in the month of September from the sea to the mountains inland, especially to the fore-hills of Mount Egmont. Here the female, which is at that time very fat (though it afterwards becomes thin, and even emaciated), lays one egg, which is remarkably large for the size of the bird. Instead of building a nest, she deposits and covers over her egg in a deep channel under the roots of trees, or at the sides of a cliff, and never leaves the place until the egg is hatched. The natives believe that, during this period, the female takes no food. At one place Tangutu conducted us into the bed of the river, whence we had the satisfaction, for the first time since we had entered the forest, of seeing Mount Egmont, which rose to the south-west, covered with snow, but its summit hid in the clouds. The dense forest on both sides of the river formed, as it were, a framework to the picture. My guide suddenly stopped at the bank near this point, and clearing away with his hatchet a few of the young tawai trees, chanted some hymns, and begged of me to read a chapter from Paul's Epistle to the Romans. On my asking the reason of this sudden procedure, he told me that many years ago, when going with a party to fetch kokowai (red-ochre) from the foot of the mountain,

they had been surprised at this spot by a party of the Waikati tribe, and that in the struggle which ensued his mother had been killed. He had never, he said, visited that spot since, without paying a tribute to her memory.

Our provisions now grew very scanty; and when on the following day the sky was again overcast, and the rain poured down in torrents, I almost gave up the hope of ever reaching the summit of Mount Egmont, especially as Tangutu now frequently lost all trace of the right direction. The rain continued during the 10th and 11th, and all our provisions were gone. We could procure no dry wood to make a fire; we had no tent with us, and got but little shelter from the trees. During these nights the forest assumed a beautiful appearance; the fallen trees, and almost the whole surface of the ground, sparkled in a thousand places with the phosphorescence of the decayed matter : we seemed to have entered the illuminated domain of fairyland. When the weather cleared up we determined to return, abandoning for the present the attempt to reach the summit of the mountain. Taking a different track from that by which we had come, we again stood on the sea-shore on the evening of the 15th of December.

I started again, however, on the 19th, determined at all hazards to accomplish the ascent of the mountain. I persuaded E-Kake, one of the chiefs, to accompany me, who took a slave with him, and sent on before a female slave to one of his plantations which lay in our route, with an order to prepare maize-cakes for us to carry as provisions. This time I was more fortunate. Although we took a different route, in order to obtain provisions at the settlements of E-Kake, in four days we reached our last halting-place

at the foot of the mountain. We had to walk for some distance along the rocky bed, and through the icy water of the Waiwakaio; but notwithstanding the force of its rapid current, which often threatened to throw us down, we heeded not the difficulty, as we had the gratification of seeing the summit of the mountain directly before us. We climbed at last up a ridge rising on the left bank of the river, and running in a north-east direction from Mount Egmont. This ridge is very narrow, and forms towards the river a sharp escarpment; nor was it without some difficulty that we reached its crest. Higher up is a frightful precipice, close to the edge of which we had to walk. Lying down, we looked over into the deep gorge, which appeared to have been split asunder by volcanic agency, and to have been hollowed out more and more by the action of the river. This ridge was still covered with wood ; but as we ascended, the trees gradually became less lofty, and soon gave way to stunted shrubs. I found one plant of a new pine two feet high, and very much resembling one of the species of Europe. Scarcely any birds were to be seen at this height, which was about 5500 feet above the sea; the cry, however, of the parrots re-echoed from the woody gorges; and a little bird, which is peculiar to these heights, and called by the natives piwauwau, busied itself in our neighbourhood.

Not far from this point the ridge forms a platform, from which rises the pyramidical summit. We reached the platform by descending into a deep gorge, which an arm of the Waiwakaio River has scooped out of the blue lava. We walked with ease in the rocky channel thus formed, and soon came to the source of this arm, which took its rise from under a frozen mass of snow, which filled up the ravine, and remained unmelted, although it was now the

middle of summer: this, however, was owing to the fact that the influence of the sun was obstructed by high walls rising on both sides. We now began to ascend the cone, which consisted of cinders, or slags of scoriaceous lava, of various colours-white, red, and brown-and had been reduced almost to a gravel, so as to offer no resistance to our feet. We soon reached the limit of perpetual snow, about 7200 feet above the sea-level. Vegetation had long ceased, not from the great elevation, but from the entire absence of even a patch of soil where plants might take root. My native attendants would not go any farther, not only on account of their superstitious fears, but because, from the intensity of the cold, their uncovered feet had already suffered severely. No native had ever before been so high. I started, therefore, for the summit, accompanied by Mr Hebberly alone. The slope of the snow was very steep, and we had to cut steps in it, as it was frozen on the surface. Higher up we found some support in large pieces of rugged scoriæ, which, however, increased the danger of the ascent, as they obstructed our path, which lay along a narrow ridge, while on both sides yawned an abyss filled with snow. However, we at length reached the summit, and found that it consisted of a field of snow about a square mile in extent. Some protruding blocks of scoriæ of a reddish-brown colour, and here and there slightly vitrified on the surface, indicated the existence formerly of an active volcano. A most extensive view opened before us, and our eye followed the line of coast towards Kawhia and Waikato. The country over which we looked was but slightly elevated; here and there broken, or with irregular ramifications of low hills, towards the snowy group of Ruapehu in the interior. I had just time to look towards Cook Strait, and distinguish the island Kapiti, when a