smile, could not fail to excite pleasure in all beholders. His house was on a knoll at the far end of the village, and overlooked the whole settlement and anchorage. There were about twenty houses presented to our view; the walls generally constructed of wattled supple-jack, filled in with clay; the roof thatched with reeds; and a large, unsightly chimney at one end, constructed either of the same materials as the walls, or of stones heaped together in a kind of rude masonry. Dicky Barrett's own house, however, was a very superior edifice, built of sawn timber, floored and lined inside, and sheltered in front by an ample verandah. A long room was half full of natives and whalers. His wife, a fine stately native woman, gave us a dignified welcome; and his pretty half-caste children laughed and commented on our appearance to some of their mother's relations in their own language. He had three girls of his own, and had adopted the son of an old trader and friend of his, who had married a young chieftainess of great rank, and was on his death-bed regretted by the natives as if he had been one of themselves.

A nice clear stream ran through the middle of the settlement. Some few of the whalers were dressed out in their clean Sunday clothes; but a large gang were busy at the try-works, boiling out the oil from the blubber of a whale lately caught, as this, it appears, is a process which will not admit of delay. The try-works are large iron boilers, with furnaces beneath. Into these the blubber, cut into lumps of about two feet square, is put, and the oil is boiled out. The oil is then run into coolers, and finally into casks ready for shipping. The men were unshaven and uncombed, and their clothes covered with dirt and oil; but most of them were strong and muscular. Australian aboriginal native was one of this greasy gang,

An

The whole ground

and was spoken of as a good hand. and beach about here was saturated with oil, and the stench of the carcasses and scraps of whale flesh lying about in the bay was intolerable.

We were told that the different whaling parties on both shores of Cook Strait and Banks' Peninsula, and still farther south, were reckoned to procure 1200 tuns of oil annually, and that about five hundred white men were employed in the pursuit.

There were about twenty-five half-caste children at this village. They were all strikingly comely, and many of them quite fair, with light hair and rosy cheeks, active and hardy as the goats with which the settlement also swarmed. The wives of the whalers were remarkable for their cleanliness, and the order which they preserved in their houses. They were most of them dressed in loose gowns of printed calico; and their hair, generally very fine, was always clean and well-combed.

A JOURNEY TO THE INTERIOR OF NEW ZEALAND UP THE WANGANUI RIVER.

I Now proposed to make a journey to Taupo, to see my old friends there. A chief, named E-Para, agreed to accompany me, as well as some of the E-Kuru's relatives. After preparing all the arms, goods for barter, provisions, and other requisites, I started up the river Wanganui in a light canoe, accompanied by E-Para in a large one of his own, on the 9th of November 1840. The navigation of this river, beyond the distance of twenty miles from the sea, is much obstructed by numerous falls and rapids. The passage up these rapids excited my ad

miration, as soon as I had overcome the nervousness which they occasioned; and I watched with wonder the perfect time which the natives kept with their paddles, as I had also observed they did in their songs and dances. On reaching the foot of a rapid the crew abandon the paddles, stand up in the canoe, and handle long poles made of manuka, or other hard wood, and charred at the lower end. With these they now push against the bed of the river in perfect unison, the poles plunging and lifting, while the canoe foams ahead as if propelled by clockwork. The helmsman also steers with a pole, balancing himself in the high-peaked stern, and guiding the canoe by poling under or away from it. The silence is only interrupted by the grating of the poles against the sides of the canoe and the foaming of the waters, or by an occasional brief word of direction from the man in the bow. The canoes follow each other in single file, with scarcely two feet between the stern of one and the bow of the next; and though a collision would in most cases render the capsizing of both inevitable, such is the skill of the natives, that an accident rarely befalls them.

the

We were bound to E-Kuru's country-settlement at Tata, in the first instance, about one hundred miles up river; and after passing through much delightful scenery, which, as we advanced, became gradually more wild and less inhabited, we reached a large stockaded village called Pipiriki, about eighty miles up the river. Two fortified hills constitute the defences in case of war; but the inhabitants generally reside on the cultivated flat between them. From Pipiriki to Tata, a distance of twenty miles, the scenery assumes a new and magnificent character, the river flowing between cliffs from 100 feet to 200 feet in height, fringed with mosses and graceful ferns down to the water's

edge, while the wood on the top hangs far over the precipice from both sides. In this part, the only path to the settlements consists of a rude but strong ladder, formed of trees and supple-jack, reaching from the water to the top.

Coming suddenly round a sharp bend in the river, you are in a rapid reach about half a mile long, beyond which the river again turns to the right. The cliffs increase in height as you advance into the reach, so that the forest trees upon the coverts seem like feathers, the song of the birds among them is only faintly heard, and the streams which rush over the steep are frittered into the thinnest spray long before they reach the water. Facing you, the cliff is surmounted by a steep hill to the additional height of some 500 or 600 feet, which seems to tower proudly over the trench in which the river flows; and on its top (the natives told me afterwards) are cultivations, springs of water, and woods of large timber, and ample room to support many hundred people when compelled to take refuge there. Though the river has a considerable descent here, and the polers have to work hard throughout the distance in ascending, the gradual increase in the height of the cliffs combines with the way in which the strata strike the water-line to produce a remarkable optical illusion. It seems as though you were rapidly descending ; and I have more than once noticed in returning towards the sea, at the rate of ten miles an hour, that you appear to be going up hill at this particular spot. If you add to this that out of a dark cavern in the cliff, near the water's edge, a large stream comes roaring and echoing and foaming into the river; that the darkness increases as you advance, owing to the height of the cliffs, and the comparative narrowness of the cleft which confines the river; and that some old legend or superstition makes the natives

speak at this point in whispers, and compose their features to seriousness, the sublimity of the whole may be in some degree imagined. Such was the overpowering impression of awe produced on me by this burst on my senses of Nature's majesty when I first went through the pass, that my smothered emotion found vent in a deep involuntary sigh, and a rushing of tears to my eyes, when we had passed on to the comparatively tame and reposing scenery which immediately succeeds.

Just before we arrived at Tata, we gave notice of our approach by a rattling salute. The reports reverberated far along the steep walls of the river's channel, and rolled up the wooded hills above, mingled with the sharper tones of the answering salute from the settlement. At length we reached the foot of one of the sky-scraping ladders which I have elsewhere described, leading to the top of the cliff, here about 200 feet high, while the river is not more than 40 feet broad. The natives clambered carelessly up, with heavy chests, and guns, and paddles, and my great dog in their arms; while I ascended cautiously, step by step, with uncertain footing, and hands aching with the efforts which I made to clench hard the vibrating rounds of the ladder. At last I reached the top in safety. Here E-Kuru, with all his family and adherents, were drawn up to receive me. He has a nice, quiet, happy-looking settlement, on the flat, about 300 yards in breadth, which intervenes between the edge of the cliff and the hills. After enjoying the view we descended to the river's bank, and crossed in a canoe to Tieke, a large settlement two miles higher up the river. Here there is a beautiful It consists,

monument, in honour of a dead chieftainess.

as usual, of a large canoe stuck upright, and is 30 feet high, ornamented with carvings representing three figures