We left Ruakaka with the best wishes of the natives, Te Pareoterangi riding out some distance with us to put us in the right direction. Our course now lay easterly up the valley of the Manganui-a-te-Ao, and for thirty miles through another portion of the dense forest by which we had come to reach the settlement, but by a route far more difficult to travel, according to the account given to us of the country by the natives, who informed us that we should have to cross the Manganui-a-te-Ao ten times at various points, besides other streams and innumerable creeks, before we could again reach the open country to the north of Ruapehu. The river was still so flooded that the natives earnestly advised us to remain, old Hinepareoterangi remarking, in her jocose way, "If when you are gone the skies open and the great rains descend, I will sit by the rushing waters and wait for your horses and saddles; you will make splendid food for the eels." Notwithstanding this grim joke of the chieftainess of the "heavenly crest," as the clouds were still gathering, and another flood might detain us a week or perhaps a month at Ruakaka, and possibly prevent us from ever reaching Alexandra by the course we had planned, we determined to make a desperate effort to push through. We therefore set out without delay, and crossed the Manganui-a-te-Ao for the first time about a mile below the settlement, at a very picturesque spot, but we had to descend nearly 100 feet to the crossing-place, beyond which a higher bend of the river appeared to be nearly 100 feet above us.