the snow-line, camp there for the night, and make the final ascent on the following day. There was a small clump of forest growing a considerable distance up the scoria ridges, and as this was the only belt of vegetation of the kind on our track, we determined to direct our course to it, in the hope of finding water and a suitable camping-place for our horses. Our route now lay over low scoria ridges, which were intersected in every direction by winding, boulder-strewn gullies, which evidently during the wet season and the melting of the snows formed, with the deep creeks, the principal channels of the watershed of the mountain, as it distributed itself from the heights above over the low country. Upon the sides of these gullies, and clustering about the vast deposits of scoria, grew a luxuriant vegetation of dwarfed alpine shrubs, while wherever the sides of the gullies were obscured from the sun the thick white frost, which had wrapped the country in its icy mantle on the previous night, rose up from the ground in the form of thick icicles, from two to three inches in length. These icicles, like those which covered the Waihohonu Valley, were the most curious I had ever seen. They rose from the small, disintegrated scoria, which everywhere covered the ground, almost in the shape of a plant with a straight stem and a fringed top; and, while some stood alone, others were clustered together, forming a thick mass of ice. It seemed, indeed, as if the moisture which had literally saturated the ground during the heavy rains we had experienced had been drawn up to the surface by the frost by a kind of capillary attraction, which had produced these miniature plants of ice. When we arrived at the small picturesque bush of _towai_-trees, we found that there was but little or no feed in its vicinity, so we only halted here for a short time to explore the surrounding country. On our right were the level plains and sinuous ridges over which we had ridden, while at some distance to our left an enormous lava ridge, like a ruined wall, cut off all further view to the south. We cut a couple of alpenstocks and a flagstaff, and next determined to take our horses still further up the mountain, to a a point where we could see the last sign of the dwarf vegetation, some of the plants of which we found our animals would eat, in default of anything better. As we made a fresh start, we saw a party of mounted natives riding along the track below, and whilst we hid our horses in a gully, we crawled to the top of a ridge and watched carefully, to see whether they would pick up our tracks. Fortunately, however, they passed on, riding hard along the track which passes through the Tongariro Plains into the heart of the King Country.