I reached Alexandra along a delightful road lined with the hawthorn and sweetbriar, and through a picturesque country, where quiet homesteads, surrounded by green meadows filled with sleek cattle and fat sheep, imparted to the aspect of nature an air of contentment and quiet repose. Indeed, when doing this journey in a light buggy drawn by a pair of fast horses, it seemed difficult to realize the fact that I was fast approaching the border-line of European settlement, and that a few minutes more would land me on the frontier of a vast territory which formed the last home of perhaps the boldest and most intelligent race of savages the world had ever seen. In fact, when approaching Alexandra from the Te Awamutu road, with its neat white houses, embowered amidst gardens and groves of trees, and with its church-spire pointing towards heaven, I seemed to be entering a quiet English village; and had it not been that the eye fell now and again upon a dark, statuesque figure, wrapped in a blanket, and with a touch of the "noble savage" about it, it would have been somewhat difficult to dispel the pleasant illusion. The township was not large, and a school-house, two hotels, several stores, a public hall, commodious constabulary barracks surrounded by a redoubt, a postal and telegraph station, a blacksmith's forge, and about fifty houses, built for the most part of wood, formed its principal features of Anglo-Saxon civilization. On the day following my arrival at Alexandra I left, in company with a native interpreter, for Whatiwhatihoe, to present my credentials to the Maori king. Our ride across the frontier into Maoriland was a most delightful one. The steep, wooded heights of Mount Pirongia had cast off their curtain of mist, and stood revealed in their brightest hues; while the green, rolling hills at its base formed a pleasant contrast with the more sombre, fern-clad banks of the Waipa River, as it wound its devious course from the direction of Mount Kakepuku, which rose above the plain beyond in the form of a gigantic cone. The country for miles around lay stretched before the gaze, forming a varied picture of delightful scenery, and all nature appeared budding into life; while the prickly gorse, with its golden-yellow flowers, encircled Whatiwhatihoe like a _chevaux de frise_. The primitive _whares_[5] of the natives imparted a rustic appearance to the scene, as they stood scattered about the country to the south, while, as the eye wandered in the direction of the north, the white homesteads of the settlers served to mark the _aukati_[6]--frontier-line--separating the King Country from the territory of the _pakeha_.[7]