Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/157

Rh felt hat, a gray sweater, overalls, and white canvas shoes, and in his mouth was a pipe. He was bowed low under the weight of years, yet his step was springy. And why should n't it be? Was not he to get a fourth of that shilling? So far as I was concerned, my impromptu guide might as well have been speechless. I could n't understand a word he said; in truth, there were very few words he did speak after he found I was n't a Maori scholar. Instead, he became little more than a dumb show, with arm touches as his signals, and grunted "ughs" as his explanations and exclamation points. His first grunt referred to a hot blue pool inclosed with an iron fence. Into it a native had fallen years before, and had been boiled to death. In explanation of this tragedy, my guide made a wry face, flapped his arms and shrugged his shoulders, then led me to three cooking-boxes, covered with gunny-sacks. Each was thirty inches long and two feet wide, and was filled with food in pots and flax kits. In this same reserve were several other cooking-boxes for the villagers' use, and in either of them a meal could be well cooked in twenty-five minutes, I had been assured by Georgiana. From one hot spring in the inclosure ran a number of small ditches, connecting with a shallow pool and a row of large open boxes. What were these? The guide tried his best to tell me, but though he flourished his arms and grunted more than before, I could not understand him. A windmill, which he somewhat resembled, would have