untains,
lakes, streams and patches of forest would, with the bright
invigorating air, make the holiday-maker seek them in numbers. Through
the middle of this curious region runs the Waikato, the longest and on
the whole most tranquil and useful of that excitable race the rivers
of New Zealand. Even the Waikato has its adventures. In one spot it is
suddenly compressed to a sixth of its breadth, and, boiling between
walls of rock, leaps in one mass of blue water and white foam into a
deep, tree-fringed pool below. This is the Huka Waterfall. It is but
one of the many striking falls to be met with in the Islands.

New Zealand is a land of streams of every size and kind, and almost
all these streams and rivers have three qualities in common--they are
cold, swift, and clear. Cold and swift they must be as they descend
quickly to the sea from heights more or less great. Clear they all
are, except immediately after rain, or when the larger rivers are in
flood. In flood-time most of them become raging torrents. Many were
the horses and riders swept away to hopeless death as they stumbled
over the hidden stony beds of turbid mountain crossings in the
pioneering days before bridges were. Many a foot-man--gold-seeker or
labourer wandering in search of work--disappeared thus, unseen and
unrecorded. Heavy were the losses in sheep and cattle, costly and
infuriating the delays, caused by flooded rivers. Few are the old
colonists who have not known what it is to wait through wet and weary
hours, it might be days, gloomily smoking, grumbling and watching
for some flood to abate and some ford to become passable. Even yet,
despite millions spent on public works, such troubles are not unknown.

It is difficult, perhaps, for those living in the cool and abundantly
watered British Islands to sympathise with dwellers in hotter
climates, or to understand what a blessing and beauty these continual
and never-failing watercourses of New Zealand seem to visitors from
sultrier and drier lands. The sun is quite strong enough to make men
thankful for this gift of abundant water, and to make the running
ripple of some little forest rivulet, heard long before it is seen
through the green thickets, as musical to the ears of the tired rider
as the note of the bell-bird itself. Even pleasanter are the sound and
glitter of water under the summer sunshine to the wayfarer in the open
grassy plains or valleys of the east coast. As for the number of the
str