Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/217

 boisterous channel, our eyes on the rapidly shifting scene and the pilot, his eyes on banks and trees that were his aids in navigation. Then came stretches of steep but placid water, and many turns, each with a different vista. Soon the scenery became more interesting. Over shrub and tree rambled the white clematis, toitoi bowed to tree fern, and high up on pine trees climbed the tenacious kiekie and nestled the aerial astelia. Next came high stratified bluffs running back to forested steeps. Farther down were heavier forests, broken here and there by scrub and fern-grown clearings.

"It is n't safe here; please move over."

It was a member of the crew warning two passengers away from the port gunwale aft. Another rapid was just ahead. And there was something else just ahead, also. A slow bell clanged near a sharp turn, and a big dugout canoe waiting near the shore slid alongside the launch with a bump. Maori hands grasped our gunwale, and canoe and launch moved downstream together. Into brown hands a package of letters was thrust by one of our crew. The dugout was a mail boat, manned by a crew of two. "R.M.S." could not be applied to it, but to the Maori settlement across the river it was just as important as is a Royal Mail Steamer to the pakeha of large cities.

With the distance traveled the scenery continued to improve. The hills became higher and more thickly wooded, and water-courses, carrying with them the cool breath of moist and shaded banks, flowed into the