THE WAITOMO CAVES
As in other countries, so in New Zealand, there are limestone
caves, with stalactites and stalagmites, and all their effect
of wonder and mystery. They are found in some of the low hills
which rise in the heart of the Maori-owned "King Country," and as
they are only a few miles from the Main Trunk railway line, which
connects Wellington with Auckland, they can be very conveniently
visited by tourists going north or south.
The distance from Wellington to the caves is three hundred miles.
Even on the main lines the average speed of an express train is
only twenty-five miles an hour, so that a journey of three hundred
miles takes a whole day, and gives the traveller many excellent
opportunities for studying the landscape.
The trains run on a 3 foot 10 inch gauge; except for a few miles
in the South Island, there is but a single line throughout the
Dominion; often the trains accomplish well-nigh impossible feats in
crawling up and down precipitous gorges, and yet so carefully are
they handled that an accident is almost an unheard-of occurrence.
Nearly all the first-class carriages are on the corridor plan, with
a gangway up the middle. There are two seats on one side and only
one on the other, and the seats have movable backs, made to face
either way. The seats are numbered and can be reserved separately.
The second-class cars have straight rows of cushioned seats
set lengthwise along the sides of the train and are not very
comfortable; the fares on them are the same as the English
third-class fares, while the first-class fare is always half as
much again. There is never any difficulty about food on a long
journey. The express trains have restaurant cars and provide
excellent meals, charging only 2s. for early dinner or late tea. If
you happen to be on a train that has no restaurant car, the train
considerately stops at suitable hours for lunch or tea, and you
find everything ready, either at the station refreshment room or in
a hotel close by, and are warned, at the end of your meal, by a
loudly-rung handbell, that the train is ready to go on again.
Neither is there the least difficulty with luggage. The check
system is in vogue. On showing your ticket, each box is labelled
and numbered, duplicates of the numbers are given to the passenger,
and the New Zealand Government assumes full responsibility for
the luggage. On a through ticket from Wellington to Auckland, the
traveller may, after the first thirty miles, break his journey as
often as he pleases, and, if he takes two days or a month on the
road, will find his belongings safely stored in the Auckland Left
Luggage Office.
On leaving Wellington, the railway skirts the west coast, and
runs through rocky country, gracefully covered with native trees,
chiefly manuka and kowhai: I was there in winter, too soon to see
the yellow fringes of kowhai bloom, which in September are
"Flung for gift on Taupo's face,
Sign that Spring is come."
The kowhai is one of the prettiest trees, with feathery green
leaves and laburnum-like flowers, and shares with the fuchsia and
the ribbon-wood the distinction of losing its leaves in the winter,
and standing, though only for a short time, with bare branches.
The views are fine on either side. On the west you look out on
the ocean and a succession of irregular bays, whose high cliffs
rise steeply up from the water: some miles away to the east, stand
ranges of snow-capped mountains, remote and beautiful, with white
clouds floating between the peaks.
Between the mountains and the sea is level ground, excellent
for grazing and dairying, and settlements and towns are rapidly
growing. To the north of the plains is a rough country of swamp
alternating with low, rounded hills. This land has been partly
cleared and the beginning of settlements made, grass is sown in
places and cabbage trees are left standing in the paddocks. Beyond,
come stretches of fern and scrub--bracken and tea-tree repeated
indefinitely for many miles--until presently the line runs through
vast forests--thousands of acres of big bush--pines, ratas and the
rest, with all their glorious entanglement of creepers and ferns.
Later, while the train still runs through the forests, passengers
wrap themselves in their rugs and try to sleep. It is not a very
successful attempt, as at each stop you are roused--sometimes by
the entrance of fresh passengers, and always by the guard who comes
round to demand tickets.
At midnight I reached my stopping-place, found a hotel and a bed,
and slept comfortably.
Next morning I was up at 7, and after a good breakfast of fried egg
and bacon--the customary fare in country hotels--went on again by
train for another fifty miles. At 11 o'clock I reached Hangatiki, a
solitary little station, near a hotel and a few small houses. Here
a coach with three horses was waiting, to drive the remaining six
miles to the Waitomo Caves. The scenery was very much the same as
before--small hills and swamp-land, with scrub of fern and manuka,
varied by great patches of tall forest-trees.
The whole of this district, the so-called "King Country," forms
a Maori Kingdom in the centre of the North Island, and is, with
the exception of some few holdings, in Maori hands. This land
was formally assured to Maori chiefs, after one of the wars
between English and Maoris, fifty years ago, and though the Maoris
rejoice in its possession, they yet make little use of it. English
settlers, who would turn it to good account find it difficult to
buy; as, even if one Maori is willing to sell, he cannot sell
without the consent of all the other Maoris, who, in common with
himself, have rights of possession over any particular section.
At Waitomo I found a government hostel, a very imposing two-storied
wooden building, lighted by electricity, and with hot and cold
water laid on in every bedroom.
I was the only tourist, and when I asked the manager if a guide
could show me one of the caves after dinner that evening, he
expressed great regret that a party of visitors, whom he expected
from Rotorua, had not arrived. However, as I was quite certain that
I wished to see the caves, even if unattended, he finally summoned
the guide, and sent one of the maids from the hotel with me as
chaperone.
It is no light matter to visit these caves. Having found guide and
chaperone, the tourist is next expected to hire a suitable outfit,
and to don nailed boots of strong leather, also a tunic and baggy
knickers made of blue and white striped galatea, and is finally
provided with an oil lantern, while the guide carries a lighted
candle and a reel of magnesium wire.
The guide proved to be a boy of good education, who had come out
from Home in search of adventure, he had worked for a time in a
solicitor's office in Wellington, and was doing a little guiding by
way of variety.
It was a pitch-black night and we were glad of our lanterns. The
entrance to the first cave is a quarter of a mile away from the
hotel and is approached by a rough and muddy track. You enter the
cave through a rocky archway among the bush. This cave was first
shown to white men in 1886, though the Maoris knew of it many
years ago and avoided it and all such places as the abodes of evil
spirits.
The Waitomo Cave consists of a vast series of limestone caverns,
with endless stalactites hanging from the roofs, and pure white
columns rising to meet them from the floor. There is very little
bare rock, wherever you look are limestone formations, richly
covering the surface and assuming beautiful or most fantastic
shapes. One great cluster of columns is like the pipes of an
organ; in one cavern you have a poulterer's store, with geese and
turkeys, heads downwards, hanging from the ceiling; in another
is a greengrocer's shop, with great carrots and parsnips of
yellow or creamy limestone; on the floor are many beginnings of
stalagmites, formed by the overhead drippings, and which the iron
in the water has coloured yellow or brown--these are poached eggs
or Stewart Island oysters, according to fancy. In one grotto hangs
a beautiful white shawl--the Waitomo Blanket--it hangs in graceful
folds, and the iron has given it a broad brown border. All these
caves are entirely untouched and unspoilt, they have not been
in any way altered or improved, not even by the introduction of
electric light. As we went slowly through, the guide kept lighting
fresh lengths of magnesium wire, which softly and delightfully
illuminated each fresh marvel. In one place he made a veritable
bonfire of the wire, and displayed a lofty hall, very white and
glittering, ornamented with lovely white pendants of all shapes and
sizes.
An underground river flows through the caves: when you reach the
last cavern, the lights of candle and lantern are extinguished,
and in perfect silence and almost total darkness you enter a small
boat, which the guide pulls gently along on a wire rope fixed to
the wall; then you are told to look up, and there on the roof are
myriads of tiny glow-worms, by whose light huge stalactites are
visible. The cavern continues for some two hundred yards, with a
very uneven roof, all craggy projections of rock and limestone, and
in every nook and corner, like stars in the sky, shine glow-worm
lamps of varying intensity, giving just light enough to show the
outlines of this mysterious place, and in the black water roof and
glow-worms are dimly reflected.
Next morning I again put on Government boots and cave dress, and,
mounted astride on a good horse, went with the guide and a friend
of his--a boy from the Waitomo Store--for a short ride of between
two and three miles to see two more caves. Both of these were
entered by low openings among the trees of a bush-covered hill.
The larger of the two has a succession of long narrow passages,
connecting several lofty halls, and the walls of passages and
grottoes alike are covered with deposits of lime, much of it
looking as though incrustations of brown coral had been thickly
spread over every square inch of surface. Here too are glittering
hanging shapes and many strange formations, some reminding you of
huge cauliflowers, others of birds' heads.
A narrow stream flows through, and, on the "ghost walk"--most
appropriately named--you hear an uncanny noise, caused innocently
enough by a waterfall which rushes down the rocks outside.
The last cave is the smallest, and, except that it has no glow-worm
cavern, the most beautiful of the three Waitomo Caves. Each and all
of the caverns and passages which compose it are equally lovely,
from floor to roof one gorgeous adornment of pure white crystal,
which shines in countless jewelled forms in the glow of the light
from the magnesium wire. One hall was particularly beautiful
with multitudes of hanging stalactites; another was crowded with
slender pillars stretching away into the darkness. In some caverns
are small white figures perched on rocky ledges--one set like
chessmen on a board; from the roofs of the caverns hang several
thin white shawls with hem-stitched edges, while innumerable snowy
pendants taper elegantly downwards to meet white columns rising
from the floor. The whole effect of this wondrous cave is of some
magician's palace of fairyland, built for Oberon and Titania, and
to be gazed at in reverent amazement by mortal eyes.
Apart from the caves, there is little to detain the traveller at
Waitomo. There are few settlements and fewer tracks among the
surrounding swamps and forests. I climbed a low hill which has
been partially cleared. From the top I looked down upon a very
new homestead of wood, its paddocks partly cleared and all fenced
in with barbed wire. All round me on every side stretched ridges
behind ridges of low hills clothed with sombre forests: while forty
miles away, bounding the view to the south, were the snowy peaks of
volcanic mountains, one of them over eight thousand feet high.