When we left our camp at Rangitanua it was in the hope that we should be able to reach the Manganui-a-te-Ao by nightfall, but in this calculation we were greatly out. We passed round the western end of Lake Rangitauanui and entered a boggy, densely-wooded country, where the trees, especially the _rimu_, were larger and more gigantic in proportions than any we had yet seen. The dense forest here literally rained with moisture, and, as we had to lead our horses, we were at places compelled to plunge through swamps where the big roots of trees threatened to break our legs and those of our struggling animals. We crossed a branch of the Mangawhero, and towards sundown came to a small open flat called Pakihi, surrounded entirely by the forest, and where we found excellent feed for our horses. It had taken us seven hours of hard travelling to reach this spot, and during that time we had to cross no less than ten boggy creeks, besides other streams. The Mangawhero River ran round the western side of this small oasis, the _towai_-trees forming a conspicuous feature along the banks of the stream. We camped at Pakihi for the night, the stillness of the place being only broken now and again by the shrill note of the whistling duck. We struck camp at Pakihi early on the following day, but had some difficulty in crossing the Mangawhero, which we found to be a broad, rapid, boulder-strewn stream. The banks were very steep and slippery, and when we had our horses down on one side we had great difficulty in getting them up the other. As we got again into the thick of the forest the vegetation became denser, and the _rimu_-trees, seeming to increase in size, shot up for over a hundred feet as straight as gun-barrels. Where some of these giants of the forest had fallen across our track, we had often to cut a way round them for our horses, through the thick shrub and tangled vines, the latter of which impeded our progress at every turn, by tripping us up, and winding round the legs and necks of our animals like treacherous snares. The enormous _rata_-vines had been very troublesome up to this point, but now we had to do battle not only against them, but against the supple-jacks, which we found growing everywhere in a perfect network of snakelike coils on the soft, marly soil of the country we were now in. It was nothing to have a supple-jack round the neck and a _rata_-vine round the legs at the same time, while our horses would often get so entangled that they would refuse to move until we had cut them a clear passage out of their difficulties. In many instances, owing to surrounding obstacles, there was no alternative but to make them leap over the fallen trees in our way, and when not able to do this, the animals would jump on to them and leap down like dogs. Indeed, the tricks that they had to go through to get over these and other impediments rendered them almost as clever as circus-horses.