Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/206



thermal wonderland is not the only weird district in New Zealand. In Waitomo there is weirdness too, for it is celebrated for its caves, lying in a volcanic, limestone area one hundred miles south of Auckland. They are reached by the Main Trunk, New Zealand's longest railway, running between Auckland and Wellington four hundred and twenty-six miles long.

The Main Trunk passes within sight of the mountains of Tongariro National Park and through districts that until a comparatively few years ago were inhabited only by Maoris. Some of the construction features of this line are high steel viaducts and the Raurimu Spiral, which enables trains to ascend about seven hundred feet in two miles. At its highest part the railway is half a mile above the sea, and for more than two hundred miles the cost of construction exceeded seventy thousand dollars a mile. Compared with Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, Waitomo's caverns are small; but they are remarkably formed. Aranui, for example, has formations resembling lace and fresh snow; it has "shawls" and "blankets," "marble" and "wax," and it is the only New Zealand cave yet discovered that has "water-lilies."

Of the principal caves Waitomo and Ruakuri have