“There is no railway travelling out here after ten at night,” replied Colonel Deane. “The Minister for Railways thinks that that is quite late enough for engine-drivers and guards to be out! But you ought to cross the Rimutaka some day, only it is better to do so coming from Wellington, as you then see the prettiest part of the scenery, the Wairarapa, and the Manawatu Gorge, by daylight. It used to be amusing in the old days when five or six coaches met in the gorge and the roads were in parts dangerous enough to add a spice of excitement to the journey, but nowadays,—well, I think I’d rather have the extra half day in Wellington than spend a night and half a day more in getting there for the sake of seeing three engines help a train over a mountain pass!”
And agreeing with him we kept to our “birdcage” in the express. The scenery was varied; we ran through rather broken country, a study in yellow, white, and green, with masses of yellow gorse, luxuriantly flowering manuka, and bush or fern where corn-fields were not, skirting the coast all the time.
The sun was near its setting when Colonel Deane drew our attention to an island a few miles out, very precipitous, rugged, and rocky.
“That is Kapiti,” he said. “It is reserved for native birds now, but for twenty years it was the stronghold of a Maori chief named Rauparaha, who shared with Hongi the reputation of being the fiercest and most cunning of all the famous Maori warriors, and yet had a son who became a missionary among the tribes his father used to harry.”
And the tale of Rauparaha’s raids, by which he made himself the scourge of the coasts of both islands and the terror of all the tribes within his reach, occupied the rest of the run into the Empire City, Wellington.
