Here the Waikato, deeply and beautifully blue, wound through a rocky valley, fringed with bold mountains which rolled away as far as the eye could reach along the course of the stream. At the crossing-place the whole volume of the river rushed over enormous rocks with a roar like thunder, while on the south bank of the stream, and right above the seething waters, a gigantic pinnacle of rock, called Pohaturoa, towered in solitary grandeur to a height of 400 feet. This curious natural monument was a striking feature for many miles around. It sprang from a level base, with steep, rolling, buttress-like sides, above which its adamantine walls shot perpendicularly upward to its rounded summit. Around it, in every direction, lay enormous boulders, some of many tons in weight, but all scattered about in the direst confusion, as if a regiment of giants, offended at its defiant look and colossal form, had endeavoured to hurl it from its pedestal by a shower of stones, but, giving up the task as hopeless, had slunk off, leaving their ponderous missiles upon the field. In former times the summit of this impregnable rock was occupied by a tribe of the Arawas, who built a formidable _pa_ there, whence they kept watch and ward over their surrounding lands. [Illustration: POHATUROA.] From the deep, trough-like valley of the Waikato we mounted to the great table-land of Taupo, and rode over level plains where the snow-white pumice gleamed bare and desolate beneath the fierce rays of the sun. Pumice, pumice, nothing but pumice, rolled away as far as the eye could discern, now stretching out in a broad and flat expanse, now rising in the form of hillocks, now towering high in the shape of conical mountains, now winding away in deep ravines--white, bare, and sterile as a boundless desert, save when the stunted tussock grass struggled, as if it were for life, with enormous stones and boulders fashioned from the white, porous rock, or where a crystal stream shaped its devious course beneath a dense growth of broad-leaved flax and waving _toetoe_ grass. At one point of the road we passed a tall peaked mountain, with pumice sides, which rose from the bottom of a deep gorge, like the bed of an ancient river, while right opposite to this, on the slope of a hill, was a curious rock, shaped like a mushroom. Through a level tract of country we reached the native settlement of Te Motupuke, with densely wooded hills in the background, which stretched out to the tall summit of Otuparataki. The forest-crowned peak of Puketarata soon rose up on our right; and passing the Maori settlement of Ouranui, we reached the steaming hills and glades of Wairakei. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 35: This term is applied by the colonists to forest country.] CHAPTER X. WAIRAKEI.