; a white
verandah-ed wooden house, surrounded by its gardens, orchards, paddocks,
and fields. The steamer stops, and lies off three or four such places
while her dingey communicates with the shore, embarking or disembarking
passengers, mails, or goods. Generally, though, when the river-banks are
low enough to permit of a view beyond them, we see nothing but very
barren and shaggy-looking tracts, not unlike Scottish moorlands in
general aspect. Occasionally there are poor scrubby grasslands, where
the soil has not done justice to the seed put upon it; and where cattle,
horses, and sheep appear to be picking up a living among the fern and
ti-tree.

As we get nearer to Riverhead the stream narrows. This is the point to
which the tide reaches. Beyond it the Waitemata is supplied by two
creeks, the Riverhead Creek and the Rangitopuni. Here the banks are
steep and high, somewhat picturesque, with varied ferns and shrubbery.
On the north side the ranges rise into a background of hills.

This is the end of our river journey, as is evidenced by the Riverhead
wharf, built out from the bank. Here we land, and are received by two
men, who represent the population of the district, and who apparently
are idle spectators. By their advice we shoulder our traps, and climb up
some steps to the top of the bank. Right before us here is an
unpretending house, built in the usual rambling style of architecture
peculiar to frame-houses in this country. A board stuck up over the
verandah announces that this is the hotel; and, as the arrival of the
steamer is the signal for dinner, every one makes for the open French
windows of the dining-room.

Dinner is ready we find, and we are ready for it. Perhaps about a dozen
passengers came up from Auckland in the boat, and as many of these as
are not at home in the immediate neighbourhood sit down to the table.
The party is further augmented by the skipper and his assistants, the
wharf-keepers, one or two residents in the hotel, and the host and
hostess with their family. Quite a large company altogether, and of very
promiscuous elements. The only persons not entirely at their ease are
Dobbs and his wife. They find themselves dining with the "quality," as
they would have said at home, and have not yet learnt that that word is
written "equality" in this part of the world.

At the head of the table sits somebody who is evidently a personage,
judging by the flattering attentions paid to him by the dau