LAKELAND PICTURES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 89, 15 April 1913, Page 6

LAKELAND PICTURES.

THE POOLS OF KAWAU—THE HULLS OF HEARTS DESIRE. In these hurry-scurry touring days ■ not a grate many people see that , little dark blue eye of a lake called Roto-Kawau. There was a time when it was one of the favoured sights in tlie Rotorua country, when the visitor to the Lakes somehow had more leisure, and could devote a few days to a camping-out holiday. Some twenty years ago, before the coach road was constructed from Rotorua through to the' east end of Rotoiti and its sister lakes, it was not possible to drive further in that direction than Tikitere, and so instead of tearing along at top speed to the shores of Roto-ma and back again in time for dinner, after . a perfunctory look in at Tikitcre's boil- , ing mud-pots, the traveller had plenty of time to inspect old Alice Takurua's steamy garden of horrors, and then . walk up through the shady bush to Roto-Kawau, before mounting horse or trap again for his Ohinemutu place of stay. Now the coaching companies don't encourage people to go on to Roto-Kawau, because it is off the main road, and the boardinghousckeepers don't fail to make trouble if the evening meal is kept waiting. So the tourist person loses a couple of hours at least of the beat part of the day out of doors, and incidentally misses many an interesting and beautiful spot. Roto-Kawau is less than a mile from Tikitere, along a very fair driving road, so that the side-trip would lengthen the day's excursion by less than an hour. . lt lies just about east of Tikitere, bedded in the woody hills that swell up into the rocky and densely-forested heights of Mount Whakapoungakau. Nowadays the drive or ride from Tikitere to the hill-brow that overlooks the lake has lost much of its cliarm because the bush has been cut away, and only a few little tree-clumps and single trees remain to hint at the former beauty of the place. But the lake is still there—the '"'Lake of the Cormorant," or as that unpalatable fowl is more commonly called, the shag—and the steep cliffs which ring it in are still plentifully furred with evergreen tree, shrub and fern., and every rock and every stone carry a delicate enamelling of moss. It looks as nearly round as a lake can be: perhaps half a mile in diameter, and • singularly deep-set amidst its encircling cliffs and woods, as if it occupied—most likely it does— the crater of an ancient volcano. Most of the timber is on the eastern and northeastern sides; there the lake is deepest, .judging by its black-blue hue under the cliffs, and there the pohutuIcaAva and rata grow outwards iv all sorts of crooked, twisty shapes, and stretch their arms out over the lake and point their leafy fingers at the unfathomed depths. Unfathomed, not unfathomable—the lake bottom hasn't been sounded there, so far as I know, but that's not to say that it has "no bottom," as tlie careless phrase goes. Beneath those , cliffs in the nor'-east rounding of the lake there is a subterranean outlet, by which RoioKarwau's waters find their way. down, far from the light of day, until they reach a stream which flows into Lake Rotoiti, near th'j old aettlorueot .jJJCajjuae-EJira, so- it is _£--$!>«>,

Maoris, at any rate; and subterranean stream-channels are so common in this Rotorua country that it seems certain that Roto-Kawau has such an outlet for its surplus waters. That part of the lake where the unseen stream is said to leave it has an aspect of mysterious glooni, accentuated by the dark-green precipice that seems to lean over it. And there on the hare branches of certain aged pohutukawa the local colony of Kawau, the long-necked bird from which the lake takes its name, lias its roosting-place," and every now and again you may see one of "those sombreplumaged, untoothsome creatures drop in a flash to the deep waters and dive for a darting shoal of "toitoi," the which, like other little fish, can be clearly seen from a, great height by the hawk-eyed watchers on the sentryboughs. * Once upon a time, as old _rihi of Tikitere tells mc, Roto-Kawau was a famous place for the Maori fisherman. Ihere were villages on its now-deserted banks, and canoes upon its waters where not a canoe now floats. The little round lake was thick with the tiny fish at certain seasons, and the "koura," the small, sweet, forest-water crayfish, crawled in thousands upon its sandy bottom, and "kakahi," the fresh-water bivalve common to all these lakes, was there in abundance. One method of catching the toitoi was to wade out into the water at the shallower (western) side of the lake, with a "kupenga," or fishing net, of extra fine mesh, about 30ft in length, and five or six feet deep, weighted at the bottom with stone sinkers, and rigged with an upright stick at each end. Slowly and quietly the net was swept round the shoal —as I have seen it done for whitebait at Mokoia Island—and then quickly drawn inshore and smartly overhauled, and a leaping, wriggling mass of little gleaming fish Avas turned out into the outstretched flax baskets of the womenfolk. But, as most parts of RotoKawau are too deep for wading, a good deal of the fishing was done from canoes, quietly paddled, with scoop-nets. On tlie western beach side one would have seen stretched, out to dry in tlie sun—as you could have seen them on Mokoia and on Kotoiti's shores a few years ago, tlio "hao-koura," or crayfish trawl-nets—funnel-shaped flaxen traps some 12ft deep, extended on wooden "paepae" or frames, At the bottom of which stone sinkers (Whakataumaha) were fastened at regular intervals. These primitive trawls were operated from canoes, whose crews dragged the wcllweighted nets where the ' juicy little koum lay on the lake-bottom. As for the kakahi shellfish, for it the "rou-kakahi" was brought into play, or work—it was both with the olden industrious Maori. Tlie "rou" was an ingenious wooden contrivance with teeth like a rake, and a flax net behind to catch the shellfish as they .were raked up from the sands when thecanoe-men hauled the stone-weighted machine along the bottom. Such were the fishing methods of the Lakes. The crayfish and whitebait and kakahi are still very plentiful in •Roto-Kaw'au's waters (unlike Rotorua and Rotoiti, where the rainbow trout has eaten them out) ; but the Maori doesn't trouble to fish for them these days. "Ka nui tona inangere"—"he's too lazy"—says grey-haired Arihi. Up above yonder, to the east and southeast, the blue hills of Whnkapou-ngakau swell in wooded ridges to the high skyline, some 2.500 ft above sea level, and nearly 1,500 feet above the lake. On the other side they dip abruptly to that fine lake Okataina, a five-mile-long sheet of deep Avater Avhich the tourist seldom, if ever, sees, though it is but six miles in a straight line from Lake Rotorua; its bushy western shores are quite boldly mountainous, shooting up in places more than a thousand feet, precipitously. The name of tlie range, Whakapou-ngakau, holds a story, a dim old legend of the Maori; a not unpoetic name, for it means to fix the heart upon a certain object—in short, the Hills of Heart's Desire. From Arihi Takurua I heard the story of Tancwbaknraka AA'hakapou-ngakau," and his priestess sisters. A very long time ago, generations upon generations, said Ariki, when the Maori had but just discovered this strange land of Aotearoa, there ciiine to these shores from Hawa'iki, in the Great South Sea, two witch-chieftainesscs whose names were Kuiwai and Ilaungaroa, and their brother Tane-whakaraka. The women were learned women indeed in occult lore, and were possessed of wonderful "mniia," as will be seen. They lauded on the coast of the Ray of Plenty and wandered inland'to these parts, exploring and naming places. At last they reached Tikitere there below—it had no boiling springs at that time —and there in the A"alley the sisters camped awhile. But the restless Tane-wlinkarakn, who was a great hunter, a bird-spcarer, and snarer, discovered that allthis hilly country and the woods above Rotorua was a grand place for him, and so he resolved to set off into the ranges with his fowling-tacklc. Pigeons, kaka parrots., tui, bellbirds, kokako—the hush swarmed with them, and they were as tame as tame could be. A paradise this for the Maori birder! Tane-Avhaka-raka pointed to the blue mountains of the feathered children of Tiki. "I'm going yonder," said he to his sisters. "I may be a long time away. I have fixed my heart upon those bills! Remain you here, and I shall bring you the spoils of the forftst!" And off to the unknown heights, past Roto-Kawau, went Tane, trailing his long bird-spear and carrying his kaka-snares. That was. the last the priestess sisters ever saw of him. They waited long and anxiously in the Tikitere valley, ever turning their longing eyes towards the purple ranges yonder, which they named Whakapou-ngakau, the Place of Heart's Desire. They tarried long, a moon they waited, but Tane returned not. Perhaps he had been slain in the forest, or perished by accident. Or, haply, lie had wandered on and on and found a home to his likingj amongst the "tangata-whenua," the original people of the land. They knew not what had happened. At last, in sorrow, they resolved to return to the sea coast and to their old home in Hawaiki. They did so, but before they departed they put forth their wizardly powers and repeated their most potent iucantatiens, and called upon Ruaimoko, the God of Volcanoes, to the end that there should be wai-ariki or bathing-pools of hot water wherein their brother should be able to refresh his weary body when he returned from the great forest. Aud Ru', the ruler of the underworld, responded to their prayer and sent forth his hidden fire's, and these great boiling springs burst forth; and so here to-day at Tikitere you see these vast cauldrons of Ruaimoko, the boiling and steaming puia, and ngawha. and Avaiariki. And then the weird sisters Avcnt their way, leaving the tall columns of vapour that ever aseeud from this valley of wonders as a sign and a guiding-mark fon their lost brother. What became of Tane the bird-hunter, whether he loft his hones in his Hills "of Heart's Desire or not, no man knows. But there the wizard-born boiling waters and the huge cauldrons of boiling mud fiune and bubble to-day, and lhut : » bow Tikitere got Jie hot "»C™p"?.