nce been a great
kauri forest--a few of these noble trees (Dammara australis) were pointed
out to me from a distance. When about halfway we left the road, and
within the distance of a mile our guide contrived to lead us into five or
six bogs, where we were up to our knees in water, besides entangling us
in several thickets nearly as bad to penetrate as an Australian scrub. At
length we arrived in sight of the waterfall, then in full force from the
quantity of rain which had lately fallen.

The Keri-Keri, after a long course through a country composed chiefly of
upland moors and gently undulating hills, here suddenly precipitates
itself over a rocky wall into a large circular pool eighty feet below,
then continues its course for a while between steep and densely wooded
banks. Behind the fall the rock is hollowed out into a wide and deeply
arched cave, formed by the falling out of masses of columnar rock. A
winding path leads to the foot of the fall, whence the view is very
grand. Some of the party crept over the slippery rocks, and reached the
cave behind the fall, where they were much gratified with the novelty of
the scene. The luxuriant and varied vegetation in the ravine affords a
fine field for the botanist. The variety of cryptogamic plants is very
great--every rock, and the trunk of each tree, being covered with ferns,
lichens, and mosses. Among the trees I noticed the pale scarlet flowers
of the puriri or New Zealand Teak (Vitex littoralis) the hardest* and
most durable of all the woods of the country. A short search among the
damp stones and moss brought to light some small but interesting
landshells, consisting of a pupiform Cyclostoma, a Carocolla, and five
species of Helix. This leads me to mention, that although the number of
New Zealand landshells hitherto described scarcely exceeds a dozen, this
does not imply any scarcity of such objects in the country, as an
industrious collector from Sydney, who spent nine months on the northern
and middle islands, obtained nearly a hundred species of terrestrial and
fluviatile mollusca. The scarcity of birds during our walk surprised me,
for the only one which I saw on shore was a solitary kingfisher (Halcyon
vagans): during our ascent of the Keri-Keri, however, many ducks (Anas
superciliosa) flew past the boat, and gulls, terns, and two kinds of
cormorants were numerous.

(*Footnote. This wood was much used in the construction of the pahs
which, in 1845, under the Ma