[Illustration: ARA-TIA-TIA RAPIDS] Some of the finest landscape views in the central North Island are to be seen from points of vantage on the broken plateau to the westward of Ruapehu. On the one side the huge volcanic mass, a sloping rampart many miles long, closes the scene; on the other, the land, falling towards the coast, is first scantily clothed with coarse tussock-grass and then with open park-like forest. The timber grows heavier towards the coast, and in the river valleys where the curling Wanganui and the lesser streams Waitotara and Patea run between richly-draped cliffs to the sea. Far westward above the green expanse of foliage--soon to be hewn by the axe and blackened by fire--the white triangle of Egmont’s cone glimmers through faint haze against the pale horizon. Between Taupo and the eastern branch of the Upper Wanganui ran a foot-track much used by Maori travellers in days of yore. At one point it wound beneath a steep hill on the side of which a projecting ledge of rock formed a wide shallow cave. Beneath this convenient shelf it is said that a gang of Maori highwaymen were once wont to lurk on the watch for wayfarers, solitary or in small parties. At a signal they sprang out upon these, clubbed them to death, and dragged their bodies to the cave. There these cannibal bush-rangers gorged themselves on the flesh of their victims. I tell the story on the authority of the missionary Taylor, who says that he climbed to the cave, and standing therein saw the ovens used for the horrid meals and the scattered bones of the human victims. If he was not imposed upon, the story supplies a curious exception to Maori customs. Their cannibalism was in the main practised at the expense of enemies slain or captured in inter-tribal wars; and they had distinct if peculiar prejudices in favour of fair fighting. I have read somewhere that in the Drakensberg Mountains above Natal a similar gang of cannibal robbers was once discovered--Kaffirs who systematically lured lonely victims into a certain remote ravine, where they disappeared. One of the curiosities of the Taupo wilderness is the flat-topped mountain Horo-Horo. Steep, wooded slopes lead up to an unbroken ring of precipices encircling an almost level table-top. To the eyes of riders or coach-passengers on the road between Taupo and Roto-rua, the brows of the cliffs seem as inaccessible as the crown of Roraima in British Guiana in the days before Mr. Im Thurn scaled it. The Maori own Horo-Horo, and have villages and cultivations on the lower slopes where there is soil fertile beyond what is common thereabout. Another strange natural fortress not far away is Pohaturoa, a tusk of lava, protruding some eight hundred feet hard by the course of the Waikato and in full view of a favourite crossing-place. Local guides are, or used to be, fond of comparing this eminence with Gibraltar, to which--except that both are rocks--it bears no manner of likeness.