been just as useful to me. Possibly the old man thought so, too, for with a final volley of grunts he threw out his arms and pointed to the exit, as if to say, "Clear out."
I did not want to "clear out," for I was still little wiser than when I entered the reserve. Fortunately I soon found a Maori able to speak English, and from him I learned that the open boxes were the remains of a bathhouse annex. The bathhouse had been built by Whaka's hotel for the use of its guests, and its water was taken from the ditch-drained hot spring a few yards above. On these baths the hotel paid a rental. In this the villagers as a whole were entitled to share; but months passed without the declaration of a dividend. At last a Maori committee called on the hotel keeper for an explanation. He told it he had been paying the money in good faith to two native men. This so angered the committee and the villagers generally that they threatened to demolish the bathhouse.
"You have no right to do so," the hotel proprietor told them.
"You wait and see," replied the exasperated Maoris.
"Then," said guide number two to me, "all the people come and tear down the house, and they say, 'We will no let the white man come in here again to wash.'"
As for the shallow pool shown me, it was the town washtub. Round this tepid basin, on Blue Monday or its equivalent in Whaka, washerwomen flock like crows in a cornfield.
Over all the "hot lakes" country are astonishing
