For landscape interest conjoined to the traditional and historic I know of no part of New Zealand more attractive than the zone along the old frontier line of the Waipa country of which Te Awamutu may be described as the metropolis to-day. Beauty of physical configuration! fertility of soil, poetic Maori folklore, memories of the heroic pioneer days, tales of sadness and glory of the war years—all these elements combine to invest the border line of the Waipa and the Rohepotae with a singular value, above all to those who have had the fortune to be reared on this well-favoured land. The physiographic charm of the country on the north side of the Puniu and the east side of the Waipa River is produced by the gently-rolling lie of the land with its countless sheltered valleys and its well-sunned slopes, with its leisurely-winding streams, with here and there a small lake; the old Maori garden lands of Te Awamutu, Rangiaowhia, Kihikihi, and Orakau, now covered with pakeha farms and tree-groves, with fat flocks and herds, and wearing all the aspect of a comfortable countryside enriched by the tillage of two generations of white farmers. The south side of the old Aukati line, more recently broken in from the wilderness of fern and tutu, is even more promising as a land of fat stock and good crops, of dairy herds and meat; and it is singularly interesting to the physiographer and the geologist. Pirongia, Kakepuku, the tattooed cone of Kawa, the fort-scarped “Three Sisters” of Tokanui, Tauranga-Kohu and its neighbour hills, the Maunga-tautari Ranges, curve sicklewise along the old-time frontier, a romantically-shaped ceinture of volcanic saliencies which seem to mount guard like giant sentries over the Rohepotae, just as they formed a belt of fiery lava mouths and cones in the remote geological past. Kakepuku, a Ngauruhoe in miniature, is a peak to hold the eye for many a mile. I came to look on that lone mountain with very much the kind of affection in which it is held by the Maori people who live around its base, whose local folklore and poetry enshrine many a reference to Kakepuku. The fair blue hills of boyhood! Once upon a time when we rode in daily from the other side of Kihikihi to school at Te Awamutu the uplift of Kakepuku, looming a few miles across the valley to the westward, seemed an enchanted mountain, holding infinite suggestion of mystery and adventure. Pirongia is twice its altitude, building up a noble rugged western skyline, but Kakepuku’s indigo-blue cone, with the crater hollow scooped out of its top, was the peak to capture the imagination. On clear days as we viewed it from the Kihikihi hills every line of the deep ravines which scored its sides stood up as bold and sharp as the singularly scarped terraces of Kawa’s nippled hill. Kakepuku almost seemed shaped and hewn from the landscape by the hands of veritable mountain gods, so regular and symmetrical its outline. Truly a picture mountain. Moreover, it was our weather glass.