RIGHTLY APPLIED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 93, 10 December 1931, Page 6

RIGHTLY APPLIED

TONGARIRO AND UPPER WAIKATO RIYER. RETENTION OF*NAME, Having said my say in the matter of the name Upper Waikato, I intended to say no more, but my friend Mr. Fildes induces me to return to the charge, writes Mr. Johannes C. Andersen in the Wellington Evening Post. He quotes several more authorities for the name Tongariro, but I would point out the authorities he quotes. refer to the part of the river, the "delta," where it enters the lake; and , I had already stated that Hochstetter commehted on the fact that the Natives curiously called that part of the Upper Waikato between the Poutu and the lake Tongariro, so that a small portion of the river about five miles in length bore that name, whilst the remaining 35 miles of the upper part of the river and the whole of the part below the lake bore the name Waikato. I was speaking to a fisherman, too, who told me that when he fished the river the lower five miles or so was what they knew was the Tongariro, and it was only in that part they caught the good fish. I have also pointed out that a tributary coming from the Kaimanawa Range is on an old map called the Tongariro, and it joins the river near the Poutu, coming from the other direction, and that possibly it carried its name on to the delta. I also showed that yet another tributary from the Kaimanawa Range — that is from the east — is marked Tongariro in another old map, but both names have been dropped. The majority of the authorities quoted 'therefore for Tongariro apply that name to the lower few miles only, as already pointed out by me in the case of Hochstetter. There is no reason why that name should be applied to the other 35 miles, when it was never applied, so far as records show, to more than the five miles from the delta south. Source of Bulk of the Water. As regards the name Upper Waikato being applied to the river taking its rise in the eastern slopes of Ruapehu, Mr. Cowan, who twits me for writing of these regions when I have not been there, holds that as the great bulk of the water comes from the Tongariro block the name Tongariro ought to be applied to that water. On the other hand, my friends, Messrs B. C. Aston and Phillips Turner, hold that the greater body of water by far comes not from the Tongariro block, but from the long valley in the Kaimanawa Range drained by the Waipahihi. I have spoken to others who have been in both regions; I have seen photographs of the rivers; and whilst I agree with my friends who claim the Waipakihi, a river 30 miles long, as the main feeder of the Upper Waikato, I still hold that the name Upper Waikato is rightly applied, not to the Wesjkrn tributaries Mangatoetoenui, Waihohonu, etc., nor to the eastern tributaries Waipakihi, Tongariro, etc., but to the middle stream that takes its rise on Ruapehu. My reason is this. The central water shed of the North Island runs irregularly south along the Hauhungaroa Range on the west of Lake Taupo through the Tongariro and Ruapehu blocks, turns abruptly east and the north along the Kaimanawa Range, sending the rivers Whanganui, Wangaehu, and Rangitikei southward, the Waikato north ward. The central head of the watershed is in the Ruapehu region where the Upper Waikato rises. As it flows north it receives the little Waipakihi and the Waipakihi from the east — the Waipa-! kihi being at the junction a larger and longer river than the Waikato, which it joins, but is a tributary in the same way that the Missouri, for instance, is a tributary of the lesser Mississippi. From the west it receives the tributaries Mangatoetoenui, Waihohonu, Poutu, etc. — in all cases distinctly tributaries since they join the main stream coming from Ruapehu at more or less of an angle. The Main Stream. I note the remarks of Mr. Phillips Turner on the insignificance of the Waikato on Ruapehu as compared with the Waipakihi, but that does not affect the nomenclature, as it is the main stream of the river, even if it is the smaller, rising in the main watershed, that is taken as the main river. See "The Geography of New Zealand" of my friend Dr. P. Marshall The Maori, too, evidently named the, river from this point of view, for, as Mr. Cowan admits, the small stream at the head was called by them the Waikato. If the local usage was ro name the lower part, that at the delta, the Tongariro, that should not influence the retention of the name Upper Waikato. And it should be remembered that the ques.tion about which the whole discussion started was not the changing of the name Tongariro to Upper Waikato, but the desire of certain anglers to change the name Upper Waikato, which has been the official name since 1844, to Tongariro.