Rochfort Takes Another Route.

So now there was no choice for it but to turn back along the track and abandon the attempt to carry the reconnaissance up the valley of the Ongarue and on to Te Kuiti. The explorer and his men packed their swags and shook the mud of Taumarunui off their feet. They marched back to the Waimarino uplands and from there on to Tokaanu. The surveyor, blocked on one route, decided to try another. From Tokaanu and Waihi he took to the rugged bush country on the west side of Lake Taupo, and thence travelled through the western part of the King Country to the Puniu River and the frontier township of Kihikihi, a long, rough journey of about a hundred miles.