Southeast of these lakes, almost midway between Gisborne and the curving shores of beautiful Napier, is Waikaremoana, "Sea of the Rippling Waters," the North Island's most beautiful lake. Eleven miles long and deeply set between precipitous walls and high wooded slopes at the base of the Huiarau Range, its surface is two thousand feet above the sea, and in its most profound parts its bottom is nearly eight hundred and fifty feet below its ripples.
Waikaremoana is famed for the gray walls of Panekiri, two thousand feet high; for the luxuriance and variety of the flora darkening its shores; for its bush-clad islands, waterfalls, white sandy beaches, and for solitudes broken by the bell tones of the tui. Here one sees ancient hillforts, and hears tales of war and cannibal feasts, of taniwhas and fairies, of gods, demons, and ghosts.
