Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/377

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UP THE WAIROA RIVER
249

the bread and fish were for "all along the line," and the beer was destined for Tangiteroria. As shipping clerk the captain gave such orders as, "Meat, bread, and mail go ashore here"; and "Better put old Tommy's corn ashore, too, I suppose."

The running schedules of the Naumai, it appeared from the remarks of a woman passenger, were somewhat variable.

"You are often undecided," said she to the captain, "whether to tarry for your breakfast or have lunch before you leave home to catch the steamer. It is likely to arrive any time between eight and eleven o'clock."

"Well, isn't that near enough?" asked the jocose captain.

When the traveler reaches Tangiteroria, perhaps he will not recognize it as the head of steamer navigation on the Wairoa. I, at least, did not. At a little landing I was leisurely pacing the deck when the captain approached me and said, "This is your destination." Following the beer barrels, I found that Tangiteroria consisted mainly of a little white wharf, an unpainted store of about the same size, and a hotel where beer and a few other things were available and "dinner now on."

Through Tangiteroria passes the route to the Wairua River Falls, "the Niagara of New Zealand," fifty feet high and about two hundred feet wide. The river which feeds these falls is a very prosaic stream before it plunges over the dark walls of Omiru, flowing sluggishly, except-