Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/218

 through narrow clefts. Near one of these streams stood, one of the most unique buildings in the world. It resembled a mushroom with a half-dozen stems. It was merely a small thatched cone resting on fern posts, and having as its centre support a live tree fern, which projected above the roof and shaded it.

At one point sandstone cliffs from two hundred to four hundred feet high rose almost vertically. Their bases were hollowed by the river, and in one place so fantastically as to resemble the stump of an immense tree.

Bump! Two and one half hours out of port, in a narrow, very rocky channel, the Waireka struck bottom. A deckhand hurried to starboard with a pole, and in a minute we were off again. Anchored to the right bank, a few hundred yards below this, was a little two-deck steamer. To it we were immediately transferred, and continued the voyage. But we had not gone far before we were bumped again.

"Too much weight on the starboard side," shouted the pilot.

Three or four passengers shifted to port, and the steamer was lifted clear.

"I am getting hungry," said somebody.

"You'll soon eat; we are near the houseboat," was the encouraging assurance. So we were. The steamer whistled, and there, round a bend, was a long, narrow building that looked much like a river steamer minus smokestack and pilot house.