hamlet where the
railroad ends, containing five houses, one of which is the Oxford
Royal,--a neat but circumscribed inn, affording us a sleeping apartment
measuring exactly seven feet wide by nine in length. The stage-drive
from here to Ohinemutu--the centre of the geysers, boiling springs, and
mud caldrons, and also of the Maori reservation--is by a road a little
over thirty miles in length, which we do not hesitate to pronounce to be
the hardest to travel that it has yet been our misfortune to encounter.
The patient reader will bear witness that we do not often parade the
hardships of travel, but it makes our bones ache to recall those seven
hours of staging; and yet they were by no means without their
compensation. It was the author's good fortune to sit upon the box with
an experienced and admirable "whip,"--Harry Kerr by name,--who was fully
equal to his business. The vehicle was an American stage, the harnesses
on the horses were American made, and the stage line was owned by an
American,--a resident in New Zealand for many years, during which time
he has held a mail contract throughout the country. We travelled
lightly, there being no other passenger, and four stout horses forming
the motive power; but had not the stage been constructed of the best
seasoned material, and put together in the most thorough manner, it
would have been left upon the road in fragments before it had completed
the trip. The traveller under such circumstances is always more or less
dependent upon the intelligence of the driver who takes him through a
new country, and we cheerfully acknowledge our indebtedness on this
occasion. We can well understand why Harry Kerr is a favorite in the
Auckland district.

On leaving Oxford the journey takes one at first through a section of
country where the hills were thrown about in the wildest fashion during
the ancient volcanic period, causing them to present a grotesqueness of
aspect which is quite beyond description. Here the bowels of the earth
vomited forth their fiery secretions of molten lava, and as it cooled,
it formed itself into countless ridges and hills, no two of which are
alike. The road wound over hills, down into gulches, and skirted
precipices where to have deviated a few inches only from the proper
track would have been instant destruction. As we rose to the summit of
some elevation loftier than the rest, the view became expansive. From
one of these summits was seen, nearly one hundre