BY FOREST WAYS IN NEW ZEALAND

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BERRIES OF SUPPLE JACK

Frontispiece.

BY FOREST WAYS IN NEW ZEALAND

BY

F. A. ROBERTS

HEATH, CRANTON, Ltd.

Fleet Lane, London, E.C.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

By Forest Ways in New Zealand

CHAPTER I

WELLINGTON

The ship which brought me to New Zealand called first at Wellington, the capital city, with a population, as I afterwards heard, of ninety thousand.

Ships steam up a narrow, rocky channel into the harbour, which widens out into an area of fifty square miles, with deep water right up to the town, and wharves adjoining the chief streets. All round the harbour are hills, most of them now cleared of trees and grass-grown; but in 1840, when Wellington was founded as a Colony under the British Crown, it was a tiny settlement of huts ringed about by miles of untouched forests; and you realize with never-failing wonder how great a change has been wrought in a very short space of time. The town is built along the water front and up the hills behind, and is spreading every day higher up the hills and round the pleasant bays with which the rocky coast is indented.

To the stranger the noteworthy fact about these houses is the fact that they are of wood, and as nearly all have red roofs, when you see them perched upon the green hillsides, you wonder if you have come to some big toy town. Later you find that only the residential houses are invariably of wood; most of the public buildings—Post Office, banks, Town Hall and shipping offices—are of solid, grey concrete on steel frames; and both wood and steel are designed to resist the earthquake shocks which often visit the city, though not as a rule with great severity.

To a visitor from England all is strange and yet surprisingly the same as things left behind at home. Here is a big city with excellent shops, at which every imaginable need can be satisfied. You can buy clothes of every description—pretty dresses and hats or useful boots; there are jewellers and photographers; sellers of books, music or pianos; a depôt for Liberty's art needlework; and outside one of the florists' shops was a notice "Tree-ferns packed and despatched to all parts of the world."

Tramcars run through streets paved with wooden blocks. On all sides are men, women and children, dressed—many of them—in the latest fashions from London or Paris; and it is no foreign country that you have reached; for the shops have English names and familiar advertisements of Bournville Chocolate or Pears' Soap, and all these people are your own fellow-countrymen.

More than that, they are all possible friends, as I found before I had been two hours in Wellington. I asked some question of a lady in one of the tramcars, and after a little conversation she took me to a restaurant for "morning tea." Here, in a large and airy room, where all the small tables were decorated with vases of flowers on spotless white tablecloths, we were served with date-scones and sandwiches by girls tastefully dressed in green and white. The same day, my friend of the morning entertained me in her own home with afternoon tea and dinner. All this kindness was shown me because I was, as she explained, "a visitor from Home," and it was a pleasure to make me welcome in the new country. All through New Zealand I met with the same open-hearted friendliness and hospitality.

The shops, like those in other colonial towns, differ from English ones in having outside verandahs—roofs of corrugated iron on iron posts; the verandahs make the shop interior a little dark, but afford most useful screens either from sun or rain. The town is known as "Windy Wellington"; and it is said that you can anywhere recognize a Wellington man by the way in which he holds on his hat at street corners; the wind blows away microbes and keeps the inhabitants healthy, but is very wearing both to clothes and temper, and it is never wise to allude to it.

Neither is a strong wind always blowing. I have been in Wellington on calm days of glorious, sunny weather, when the town lay bathed in golden light, the blue harbour reflected the blue sky, and all the surrounding hills were blue, with peaks behind paling to grey in the distance. From the top of any of the hills that crowd closely together in narrow ridges behind Wellington, you look down on the town and on the irregular promontory on which it stands. On one side of the promontory is the harbour—a thread of blue water running out to the open ocean; and on a clear day, you look beyond the harbour to the coast of South Island with the snowy peaks of mountains near the coast. On the western side of the promontory, you can see over the thirty-three miles of Cook Strait to the nearest point of South Island, where blue headland and island, separated by purple shadows, rise confusedly from the sea.

At your feet, sheep feed on the short, sweet grass; and here and there in the gullies are still trees and ferns, reminders of days gone by.

The Dominion Parliament meets at Wellington in a wooden building that was until recently Government House; and the House of Representatives sits in the old ballroom, to which visitors are admitted by ticket. I went twice to hear the debate.

The Speaker's Chair is a small throne cushioned in crimson velvet, set under a carved canopy of polished brown wood; on the right sat Mr. Massey and the members of the Government; on the left, Sir Joseph Ward and the Opposition. There are galleries at either end, one for reporters, the other for strangers and members of the Upper House; and round the room was set a row of chairs for members' wives. The Mace was on a table in front of the Speaker's Chair.

The whole building is far too small, and will soon be replaced by a larger and grander house, of which the foundations have already been laid close to the present one.

Near the Houses of Parliament is the Museum, a small wooden building, in which there is very little room adequately to display all the treasures, and some have to be packed away and not shown at all.

The chief treasure is a Maori house—not a house for living in, but one in which the Maoris used to hold councils—a native Town Hall. It is a long, narrow house of one room, with a high-pitched, sloping roof, and it had originally one door and one window, both side by side at one of the narrow ends. Ranged against the two long walls are grotesque, carved, wooden figures of ancestors of the tribe of Maoris by whom the house was made—these figures are carved out of blocks of dull, red wood, and are three to four feet high; pieces of glittering blue and green shell are fastened in for eyes, and all the figures are ornamented very effectively with circular patterns in chip carving; there are sixteen figures on either side, and other figures again at both ends. The wall space between each figure should be filled in with reeds set close together, and crossed by narrow strips of wood fastened by thin bands of flax; in this house at Wellington, the reeds have all been replaced by wood, fluted, and painted a pale yellow; the ancestral figures too have been raised some way above the floor. Originally the walls were only the same height as the figures, and the roof sloped from the ridge-pole to the carved heads. The Maoris used to squat on the ground at their assemblies, so they did not need great height in their council halls.

Besides the entire Maori house, this museum has other specimens of Maori carving; such as a wooden verandah; and, set up on a high post, a tiny wooden room, slightly ornamented with carving; this latter the Maoris used as a food-store. Here too, I saw Maori clothing: aprons for men and women, all made of flax, woven tightly at the top and the ends left long and loose; there were long cloaks of flax, decorated with thrums of flax tied at intervals over the outer surface; sleeping mats too, neatly woven of flax.

Among the natural history exhibits the greatest curiosity is the "moa," an extinct New Zealand bird, who had no wings, but used to stalk over the country on enormous legs. No complete specimen of this bird has ever been found, but many eggs have been dug up, and sufficient bones and feathers for naturalists to reconstruct a life-sized model. There the bird stands, like a huge grey emu; as I stood by the side of it, my head reached the middle of the bird's thigh. There are several eggs on view—large white eggs, the size of cocoanuts; and some feathers, soft grey fluffy ones, like those of the emu, with whose feathers the model is covered. Present-day New Zealand birds are to be seen, with fish and beautiful shells from the South Seas. There are a few unexpected curios; such as a scrap of red and gold brocade from a cloak worn by Charles I; also certificates from Langley, Buckinghamshire, stating that two people named Powell, were in 1690 "buried in woollen, according to law."

Wellington has pretty public gardens, extending over many acres up the hillside and down to a well-wooded ravine, and everywhere native trees and ferns flourish. Below the hill is a broad stretch of level ground, where you find flower-beds gaily planted with English asters, zinnias and sweet peas, and shady pergolas with climbing roses.

There are Zoological Gardens too, spread over another hill on the opposite side of the town: the cages for birds and animals are set among trees—high dark pines, with undergrowth of lighter green—and the animals are rather hard to find as you trudge up and down the steep paths. A brown bear was in a cage, with the usual pole for him to climb: there were a fine African lion and lioness, sea-lions in a pond, monkeys, lemurs, squirrels and opossums; a good selection of many-coloured parrots and cockatoos from Australia, and most gawdy macaws from Malay.

I was most interested in a native "kiwi," which I persuaded the head-keeper to find for me. The kiwi lives in the bush and only walks abroad by night, so that when he is in captivity he retires during the day to the darkest, innermost recesses of his cage. The keeper found him and pulled him along by his beak—a bird the size of a large hen but on longer legs; it has a very long slender beak, and fluffy, grey feathers, and resembles its giant relation, the extinct moa, in having no wings.

In addition to gardens close to the town, Wellington has lately acquired several thousand acres of forest land round a sandy bay across the harbour. Here you find tall "rimus" and "totaras," green ferns and mosses, and many lovely tree-ferns—the variety with white undersides to their fronds, which in old days the Maoris used, like children in a fairytale, to mark out trails.

In springtime, the hills behind the town and the high cliffs along the shore are dazzling with golden broom and gorse; and on sandhills, where it has been planted to bind the sand, the yellow tree-lupin grows as freely as a buttercup.

Wellington has a large boys' school and fine University buildings. The University is affiliated to the Colleges of the other large towns, and women are admitted to degrees on equal terms with men.

There is always a steady air of bustle and business about Wellington; it is an important port—big ships come and go, with cargoes to be discharged and taken; and the fact that it is the seat of the Government makes it a necessity for the Governor and his suite to live here for several months of the year, and also brings New Zealanders from all parts of the Dominion.

CHAPTER II

STEWART ISLAND

Stewart Island lies south of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated by Foveaux Strait, a channel only thirty miles wide; but usually the sea there is rough, and the passage from South Island to Stewart Island in a small steam tug an unpleasant one. Stewart Island is about forty miles long from north to south, and has a coastline of between five and six hundred miles. In addition to Stewart Island proper there are numerous small islands, named and unnamed, scattered round the coast and away still further south. Stewart Island has two mountains, one two thousand, the other three thousand feet. The whole island is more or less hilly, and almost entirely covered with native bush.

There is one township called Oban, and a number of houses and cottages scattered about throughout the island. The steamer leaves the Bluff, the port of Invercargill, twice a week for Stewart Island, and takes passengers and mails to Oban's tiny wharf on Half-Moon Bay. There are several "accommodation houses" for tourists in Oban, all packed with people during the holiday season. The one in which I stayed soon after Christmas was so full that some of the visitors had to be housed in a small cottage in the garden, others in a canvas tent, and one in a bathroom. There were over forty visitors, and the one small drawing-room was so crowded that we were glad to pack ourselves carefully on a cushioned seat running all round the room.

The weather is very often wet on Stewart Island: it rained every day during the eight days I spent there, and though I walked out in all weathers, it was a pity to see the island so frequently through torrents of rain.

The usual plan for visitors is to make up a party of twenty or thirty from one of the hotels, hire a boat, take lunch, and boil the billy in one of the charming bays which abound all round the island. The day after I arrived was bright and sunny, just the day for such an expedition, and a large party of us started gaily in a motor sailing-cutter on a trip to Glory Bay and Ulva Island. The sea was calm, with sufficient wind blowing for us to dispense with the motor engine and trust only to the sails—a much pleasanter way of travelling than by motor. We had a delightful two hours' run to Glory Bay, where we anchored, and were all landed in a small rowing boat on a beach covered thickly with grey pebbles, large and small. Here we found a convenient fireplace fixed up—two iron supports firmly fastened in piles of stones, a stout branch of a tree laid across the uprights, and on the branch iron hooks dangling—all provided by Government, to prevent any danger of damage to the bush by careless picnic parties. On the hooks three billies were hung, a fire of sticks was lighted underneath, and when the water boiled, tea was sprinkled into each billy. In a few minutes the tea was ready, and we had cups of it ladled out to us with an enamelled mug, and sat down on the beach to an excellent picnic lunch of meat sandwiches, jam sandwiches, and tea. The trees and ferns came right down to the beach, and we looked across the quiet bay through a framework of greenery to a wooded island with the open sea beyond.

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A SANDY COVE—STEWART ISLAND.

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To-day I made acquaintance for the first time with the New Zealand "rata," one of the finest of the forest trees, attaining a height of fifty to a hundred feet. The rata is a species of myrtle, and was covered just now with crimson myrtle flowers, which in the sunlight turned a vivid scarlet, so that in patches the bush seemed to be on fire.

After lunch we explored the bay in the rowing boat, took snapshots, then again boarded the cutter, and sailed away for Ulva Island. This is an island several miles in extent, densely covered with bush; we landed, and walked for two miles along a very narrow, mossy track. The bush is very thick here, and shady: tall trees with ferns and mosses grow everywhere, while on the ground and over the tree-trunks and among the green moss are little fragile, white flowers. Even more noticeable than the trees are the tree-ferns—hundreds of them—with drooping, feathery green fronds crowning the slender, brown stems, which vary in height from six feet to forty. They grow in remarkable perfection and abundance on Stewart Island itself and on the islets round.

Our bush-track ended on a sandy beach. We then walked along a well-made path for a short quarter of a mile to a post office and store, kept by a solitary man who is the only inhabitant of the island, and who apparently lives there very contentedly; he collects the letters from the settlers on the neighbouring islands, and sells grocery, thread, stationery and other useful articles. We had been told that this was the most southerly post office in the world, but learnt later that in the Auckland Islands there is one many miles nearer the South Pole. Before we returned to the boat it began to rain, and rained steadily all the way back to Oban—real rain, which came down in sheets, and made it impossible to see anything of the scenery.

This expedition was the only one during my stay on Stewart Island, for after that, the sea was too rough for the boats to venture out. So stormy was it that twice within the week the steamer from the Bluff could not cross, and as the cable was not in working order, we were completely isolated.

A great part of Stewart Island belongs to the Government of New Zealand, and the bush is carefully protected, and heavy fines are imposed on anyone who wilfully damages it by fire or in any other way. For the benefit of tourists Government has spent some hundreds of pounds on making tracks in all parts of the island: in places simply a roughly beaten path, in others a "corduroy" track, formed of stems of tree-ferns laid side by side. The walks along these tracks are enchanting, either through dense bush, or skirting the edge of the forest, with charming views through green ferns and crimson rata to islands near and far, and the ever-distant ocean. Often the tracks lead down to some sheltered bay with steep tree-clad cliffs, whose bases are washed continually by the blue Pacific. Above one of these beaches stands the most southerly cable station in the world—an upright post, boarded four-square, through which the overland wire vanishes, to re-appear at the opposite station on the Bluff.

There are a number of native birds on Stewart Island. Chief among these are the "bell-bird" and the "tui." The bell-bird has a clear, musical call of its own, and can also imitate other birds. The "tui," is often called the "parson-bird," on account of two pretty white feathers which hang down under his chin like old-fashioned Geneva bands; the rest of his plumage is a dark glossy green; he is about the size of an English rook, bigger than the bell-bird, and like the bell-bird, sings well and musically. There are plenty of little birds; the robin, whose breast is yellow instead of red; tits, wax-eyes, wrens, and others, who dress in sober colours, and chirp to one another in pleasant, quiet notes. Round the coast you see penguins perched on the rocks. The smaller islands are favourite breeding-places for mutton-birds—grey birds about as big as quails—which are much esteemed by the Maoris as a delicacy: they are caught by the Maoris in quantities before the birds can fly, and after they have been plucked and smoked, they are preserved for future use in bags made of long ribbon seaweed.

Very good fish are to be caught near Stewart Island, as indeed all round the New Zealand coasts; blue cod is one of the most delicate, eaten either fresh or smoked, and the Stewart Island oyster-beds are famous from one end of the Dominion to the other.

The people who live on Stewart Island have the reputation of being rather lazy. Most of them are English, some of them are Maori half-castes. Part of the land has been cleared and is used for sheep runs, while some of the inhabitants are employed in cutting down timber. The chief business of the place is looking after the tourists who go in hundreds during the holiday months, and have a splendid holiday with boating, fishing, bathing and picnicing, or simply enjoying the mild climate and the lovely scenery.

Oban itself is a small township with a post-office; two small stores, where you can buy post-cards, caps, boots, pencils or grocery; and a baker's shop, with a baker who takes great pride in his home-made bread, and had never heard of German yeast. Of public houses there are none, as Stewart Island favours local prohibition, and no intoxicating liquors may be sold. There is an "Athenaeum" or reading-room, an Anglican Church, a Presbyterian Church, and some small meeting-houses for religious purposes.

The Athenaeum is used as a public hall for dances and concerts. One night a large party of us went to a concert there and heard songs and recitations. The chief item on the programme was the "haka," or ancient Maori war dance, which was performed by four half-caste Maori youths. There was no gliding movement, but much stamping of feet, gesticulating and shouting, all in unison: it is a most exhausting dance, and though it was most heartily encored, very little of the performance was given a second time.

As the weather was so bad, we were very much thrown on our own resources for amusement inside the boarding-house. Some sang or recited, or played on piano or violin, and one of the men proved a most dexterous and amusing conjurer. One night about fifty visitors joined in progressive euchre—a game which is much played in New Zealand, and another night we had a games party.

All through we contrived to be merry, in spite of the rain.

CHAPTER III

OVERLAND TO MILFORD SOUND

The walk along the Milford Track from Lake Te Anau to Milford Sound has been described by a New Zealand writer as "the finest walk in the world." It is a walk of thirty-three miles, through scenery of ever-changing variety and beauty, and is now undertaken annually by hundreds of tourists during the summer months.

Milford Track is in the South Island, among the lakes and fiords of Otago, and goes through an uninhabited and unexplored country of dense forest and inaccessible mountain. Tourists go by train to Lumsden, a small lowland township, and then on by motor coaches. These run for forty miles on a rough and stony road, almost impassable after heavy rain by reason of the mud and swollen creeks. At first it is rather an uninteresting drive, with flat "tussock" country on either side, and in the distance low hills; but gradually the scenery becomes wilder, the low hills give place to mountains bearing patches of never-melting snow, and the great lakes behind which they rise are surrounded by miles of untouched forest. The road here dwindles to vague ruts leading through the foothills of the more distant mountains, and tourists are taken for another twelve miles in wagonettes drawn by horses, to an accommodation house beside Lake Te Anau, where they spend the night.

Next day comes a further journey of thirty-three miles on a small steamer to the other end of the lake, and here in a little forest clearing is another solitary house and Post Office—Glade House—the starting-point for the walk.

I had gone with a friend, and we found eleven others all anxious to walk to Milford Sound, so we were a party of thirteen—five women and eight men—one happy family for the time being, all intent on enjoying everything as it came. Whatever luggage we took had to be carried on our backs, so we packed as few things as possible in stout canvas "swags" provided by Government for intending pedestrians, were rowed across a river in high flood, and plunged at once into the heart of the bush.

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CLINTON RIVER—TE ANAU LAKE.

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It was a delightful sunny day in midsummer. Before we began our walk there had been five days of incessant rain—every leaf dripped with moisture, and all about us was the noise of hurrying waterfall or river. The Clinton River, whose course we followed, was a wide torrent, rushing angrily over great boulders, or pausing for a while in deep quiet pools of clear green water. Numberless small streams flow from the mountains to join the Clinton, and many of them cross the track; sometimes they are bridged by a moss-grown, slippery tree-trunk; in other places they turn the track itself into a stream. There is no way round these creeks—you must simply wade through them; for my own part I did not wade through many, as one of the men of our party carried me on his back over all the worst of them. After the first two miles, this same kind friend insisted on taking my swag as well as his own, and I found that though I invariably began the day's tramp with swag on my back, I was not often allowed to carry it far.

The track is a narrow path, and green with the daintiest mosses, lovely to see and soft to tread upon. In places there is a good deal of native grass, and not infrequently grass from England too—cocksfoot or Yorkshire fog—and fallen beech leaves make a pleasant rustle as your feet brush through them. I had seen New Zealand bush in Stewart Island, and very pretty it is, but it cannot compare in grandeur or variety with the forests of Otago.

In New Zealand, the plants are still to be seen in the societies in which they have naturally grouped themselves through many generations of plant life—one group of plants in the river valleys, other groups by the sea coast or on Alpine heights; and wherever you go, you find fresh trees, ferns or mosses to admire, and always there is yet a chance of finding a plant that no one has seen before.

For several miles of the Milford track the prevailing tree is the black beech, one of the handsomest of the forest trees, with tall dark trunk and head of spreading branches, crowded with tiny, glossy, green leaves. Below the beeches grow other trees, at first somewhat thinly, but crowding more closely together the more deeply we penetrate into the forest. Among the trees are elegant tree-ferns in colonies of a hundred or more; through trees and fern-fronds gleams the sunlight; and beyond the overarching branches you catch fascinating glimpses of high mountains, their rugged summits sharply outlined against bright blue sky. Only the summits of the mountains for a few hundred feet are bare; steeply as they rise, in fact almost perpendicularly from the valley, they are yet clothed with trees in all shades of green, relieved here and there by great patches of rata blossom—the "red glory of the gorges"—and it is a constant wonder how the trees contrive to cling at all, much more how they can grow and flourish in such difficult circumstances.

Close to the track are fuchsias, which in New Zealand develop into big trees, and have pink ever-peeling bark, leathery grey-green leaves and flowers of dull purple. By the fuchsias grow veronicas, as tall as the fuchsias, now, at the end of January, in the full beauty of their abundant flower spikes, white or mauve; and with these are many trees of the compositæ family—olearias or senecios—all bearing bunches of white daisy-flowers. Many trees of the forest undergrowth have inconspicuous green or whitish flowers, and many-shaped leaves of glossy green—such are the broadleaf and the so-called fig and holly, growing side by side with the lancewood, whose leaves are saw-edged, grey-green swords. Everywhere too you find creepers and lianes—the tough black stems of the "supple-jack," and the trailing brambles of the "bush lawyer." The lawyer is a creeper which has hooked thorns on every little stem and leaf, and attaches itself relentlessly either to hair or clothes, like a dishonest solicitor, from whose clutches escape is difficult.

After a ten-mile walk we reached our stopping-place for the night—Pompolona Huts—two huts of corrugated iron, boarded throughout on the inside. One is for the men to sleep in; the other is divided into three rooms—ladies' bunk-room, dining-room and pantry. The dining-room is also the kitchen, and has a huge open fireplace and a "colonial oven" for baking bread, and over the fire is fixed an iron bar from which dangle hooks and pots. The food provided for us was the tinned meat and fruit usual in all camp life in New Zealand, with the addition of potatoes and hot boiled pudding.

The following morning we left Pompolona for McKinnon's Pass—the hardest bit of walking along the track. In fine weather the walk to Milford is easy enough, but going over the pass you are always liable to get caught in a blinding blizzard. Even in the valleys there is sometimes danger: a river or creek may rise several feet in a few hours, an insecure bridge may be loosened and washed away, or an unbridged stream suddenly become too high to ford.

After leaving Pompolona Huts, the path goes through country less thickly wooded, with occasionally wide open spaces, and little tarns of placid brown water. The ribbon-wood was in perfection in these open glades, bearing great trusses of delicate white flowers with a faint sweet perfume; they reminded us of cherry blossom, though the petals are more fragile, and the ribbon-wood actually belongs to the mallow family. The bark of the ribbon-wood is stripped off by the Maoris, and an inner layer, which looks like fine white lacework, is used in strips for making ornamental baskets. Little native flowers grow in the open: pale-mauve campanulas; tiny white daisies, and small yellow buttercups; a small, white cranesbill; and other little white things; and high in the sunlight stand masses of hardy, wiry bracken. Soon we are back in the forest, climbing gradually upwards under the trees. Throughout this walk one is continually amazed by the absence of bare, brown tree-stems; nearly every tree is covered all over with moss; trunks and branches fairly drip with it, as frost-laden trees do with icicles—moss of extraordinary beauty; some of it hanging in slender, swaying sprays, over a foot long; some short, with thick stems and feathery tufts—all of it in varying shades of green or brown. Among the mosses nestle fungi in strange diversity of shape and colour—white, pink, green or orange. Ferns, too, adorn the tree trunks, and often pale-green lichens, which from a short distance look like bunches of palest flowers.

There is a curious scarcity of birds. Stoats and weasels brought over from England and introduced into the bush in the hope that they would kill some of the superfluous English rabbits, have destroyed many native birds and their eggs, and it is now impossible to get rid of the stoats and weasels. The rare "kiwi" the wingless relation of the extinct "moa," lives still in these forests and is sometimes seen at night; I only saw it alive in the Wellington Zoological Gardens. We saw a number of "wekas"—Maori hens—brown birds about the size of a small pheasant, with very short tails and only rudimentary wings; they are not able to fly, but they walk very quickly through the fern. They had no fear of us, but walked across the path in front of us, or stood watching in the shade, and at night they prowled round the huts, looking for scraps and making weird calls to one another. We saw a few pigeons fluttering among the tree-tops, and some tits and tiny native wrens hopping from branch to branch; and by Te Anau were brown fantails, native cuckoos and a few small green-and-yellow parrakeets; and sometimes we heard the bell-bird's musical note, or the night owl hooting "more pork." English birds are now to be found in most parts of New Zealand—skylarks, sparrows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings and goldfinches. I saw none of them on the way to Milford.

Butterflies are rare, though we did see a fair number of native ones, with dainty many-coloured wings, mottled in red, brown or yellow; and the lack of bird notes was in some degree made up for by the lively chirping of a black-and-yellow cricket. Very few insects were to be seen as we walked, but whenever we stopped, sandflies, tiny black flies whose bite is as bad as a mosquito's, came swarming round—eager for our blood.

Our only other enemies were the "biddabids"—the New Zealand substitute for an English burr. They are low-growing plants, the flower stalk a few inches high, and each flower stalk produces a dense brown head of seed, each little seed vessel furnished with four fine hooked claws. After brushing carelessly against a patch of these plants, stockings, skirt or jersey are found embroidered thickly with "biddies," and very difficult it is to rid oneself of them.

Towards the top of McKinnon's Pass, the mossy path becomes a stony track, winding on and up among Alpine flowers—white gentians and ourisias growing side by side with tall white or yellow mountain daisies. Then the track leads through brown tufts of snow grass, while almost at the summit you again find tarns of quiet brown water, in whose depths snowy mountains are reflected.

Here we breathed invigorating mountain air, and had a clear view of the mountains which before we had only partially seen through a fretwork of green. The top of the pass is more than three thousand feet above sea level—a narrow, rocky saddle blocking the head of the Clinton Cañon, and on the opposite side giving access to the valley of the Arthur River. Around the saddle are rugged peaks, rising to a height of five to seven thousand feet; some bare, others piled thickly with snow: and as we watched, avalanches came thundering down from one of the glaciers into the valley beneath. We could see the whole of the Clinton Cañon up which we had walked—a narrow valley, only half a mile wide, shut in by precipitous walls of four to seven thousand feet. Their rugged summits were all rock and snow; below they were clothed with dense forests reaching down to the valley, where the river wound in and out among the dark trees like a thread of light green ribbon.

Looking down the Arthur valley, which is much wider than the Clinton, we again looked over miles of forest backed by other rocky heights.

Below the pass, nine miles from Pompolona, are the Quinton Huts, our next resting place.

Near these are the Sutherland Falls, said to be the highest waterfall in the world, falling in three gigantic leaps from a height of nearly two thousand feet. They come roaring down over the steep hillside—a mighty volume of water ever thundering on brown rock fringed with luxuriant forest growth, and scattering showers of spray over the trees and over the grassy knoll on which you stand to watch them. They were only discovered in 1880, by a man named Sutherland, a settler from Scotland in the early days, who had a fancy for exploring.

At Quinton's we met another large party on their way back, and that night the huts were overcrowded: we were eleven ladies, with only nine bunks, so two slept in the dining-room. Next morning we all contrived to dress in perfect good temper; no one dreamed of making a trouble about anything, and it might have been excusable, as there was comfortable floor space for two, not for eleven; we had one small washstand, a small, square mirror hung on the wall for our only looking-glass, and a bench to serve as table and chair.

There is no telephone in working order beyond Pompolona Huts, and the arrival of so many visitors at Quinton's was unexpected.

The flour stored there had become damp, and could not be used in a hurry for baking by the men in charge, so at breakfast we ran short of bread: the ladies had as much as they wanted, but the men made up with biscuits and ginger nuts, and said sweetly that they liked them for a change.

The last day's stage is a walk of fourteen miles, on through the forest, beside the green Arthur river, and for five miles of the way skirting the edge of a lovely lake.

The river is twice crossed by long bridges: one a suspension bridge made of three flat planks, with strands of wire for protection on both sides; the other of "corduroy" planking—the planks all unhewn logs—supported in midstream on an enormous boulder.

The forest scenery grows greener and the ferns and mosses more abundant as you draw nearer the coast. Giant pines replace the beech trees. You now see thick clumps of mositure-loving "crape" ferns, whose long transparent fronds curl over at their tips like the heraldic Prince of Wales's feathers. The track is edged by frail bracken of palest green; ferns like filmy green lace drape the trees. Of such marvellous luxuriance is all the forest growth that trees and creepers and perching plants are inextricably interwoven, and often you cannot tell to which stem or trunk any branch belongs.

Ever since we left Glade House we had seen waterfalls, large and small, hundreds of them pouring down the mountains, culminating in the magnificent Sutherland Falls. Still as we walked we saw more waterfalls, none so high as the Sutherland Falls, but many exceedingly beautiful—some mere glittering threads of feathery white; others, which fell close beside the track, were falls both wide and high, crashing through the trees and breaking into seething white foam on huge grey boulders, resting at last in deep, green pools.

That day we had lunch in a tumble-down hut, where we found tea, a fireplace and enamelled tin mugs. We boiled the billy on the fireplace and then drank our tea out of the mugs, which one of the men thoughtfully rinsed in a lake close at hand: they were not clean, but nectar in golden goblets could not have tasted more delicious.

At the end of the track there is yet another hut, and usually a man in charge of it, who summons a motor launch from the head of Milford Sound, by letting off a charge of dynamite.

We met this man on the track taking a lady to Quinton Huts, and received full instructions as to where a small rowing-boat was to be found: so some of the party went on ahead, found the boat, and rowed across the sound to summon Mr. Sutherland and his launch, while the rest of us had afternoon tea and a rest.

The launch came and conveyed us safely to our journey's end—a lonely accommodation house with a Post Office, at the edge of forest and ocean. The house is a one-storied building of wood, with corrugated iron roof and a verandah: there is a garden, with vegetables, currants and raspberries. Grass grows right up to the house. Sheep feed on the grass, and stroll even into the bathroom, which has a door without a lock. The house is comfortably furnished, and considering its distance from anywhere, surprisingly well supplied with food and other necessaries. It is even possible to buy shoes here.

The following morning we chartered the launch and were taken down the Sound and out on the Pacific Ocean.

Milford Sound is ten miles long. At its narrowest it is only a quarter of a mile wide, but where it joins the ocean about two miles. The whole sound is a deep narrow channel, formed originally by glacial action. Mountains rise straight out of the water, covered thickly with bush for some four thousand feet, until the trees stop abruptly on reaching the line of winter snow: you here see a wonderful contrast—green leaf and crimson rata-flower on the brown rock.

Here again are waterfalls. One falls sheer in a narrow unbroken column for five hundred feet; another falls in two great leaps; the higher of the two leaps curves far out from the rock and was turned by the sunshine into a golden halo.

On one side of the Sound is Mitre Peak, over five thousand feet, with bare pointed summit: opposite stands the Lion, his massive rounded crest slanting down to a narrow ridge among the forest; and behind the Lion, far away, beyond a narrow tree-girt cove, is a yet higher peak, snow-laden above the green. As we sailed out to sea, we saw black cormorants watching for their prey; gulls—white with brown bars on their wings—came flying round the boat; and, scrambling out of the water and up the rocks at the side in most ungainly fashion, were small and terrified black-and-white penguins.

In winter time, when for many miles the overland track lies buried in snow, a small steamer plies up the Sound once a month with provisions and letters for the inhabitants of the one lonely house, and sometimes a Government boat goes to Milford and other Sounds to visit lighthouses and a few scattered settlers.

There is said to be one old man who lives quite alone in a hut on one of the West Coast Sounds, and to whom the Government steamer regularly takes his old age pension changed into food and clothing; the Captain always gives orders to the men who take food for "Maori Bill" to go provided with a spade and a Prayer Book as well, in case the poor old man should be dead.

We could only spend two nights at Milford before beginning the walk back to Glade House, which we reached two days later, one happy family, as we had set out.

[i54]

LAKE WAKATIPU.

To face page 47.

CHAPTER IV

THE COLD LAKES OF OTAGO

One of the favourite holiday excursions in the South Island is to the Cold Lakes of Otago.

In England it is hardly necessary to explain that lakes are cold, but in New Zealand you never know—you find a pool of hot sulphur water under the Southern Alps, and hot creeks and lakes in the thermal district of North Island.

The largest of the Otago lakes is Wakatipu—a lake like a beautiful blue serpent. It is fifty miles long and varies in width from one mile to three and a half, as it winds in and out among stately mountains. Situated on one of the curves is Queenstown, a regal little city by the great lake, happily remote from the world and its bustle. It has no railway, and you reach it either by motor car, or more often by steamer—a delightful trip of twenty-five miles from the southern end of the lake.

I meant to spend one week at Queenstown, but the place and its surroundings are so beautiful, and I met such a number of pleasant people there, that in the end I stayed for three weeks, and left with many regrets. There are several good hotels. The one at which I stayed was separated from the lake only by a broad road. From the windows of the hotel I looked out upon tall drooping willows, fringing the blue water; and sometimes at sunset saw a wonderful display of crimson and gold behind grim purple mountains towards the head of the lake. The lake is stocked with trout; enormous specimens came right up to the landing stage to be fed; these particular fish are pets of the town and may on no account be killed.

From Queenstown tourists are driven to the Skipper's Gorge. It is a drive of sixteen miles through a strange country of bleak and rugged hills, which are bare of all vegetation but scanty, coarse grass and occasional low-growing shrubs; and on the hillsides gaunt grey rocks stand up, like pillars or ruined castles. Sheep can find pasturage on the hills, and as you drive up, you see in the valleys scattered homesteads on the stations, or the school of some tiny township. The district is thinly populated now, but in the sixties and the days of the Otago gold-rush, mines abounded in every little river-bed: a fair amount of gold is still found by sluicing and dredging.

Life is lonely and hard in these far back places, either on station or gold-claim; and sometimes you hear sad tales of men and women, whom the loneliness drives to drink or suicide.

The Skipper's Drive is a marvel of engineering. The road is cut out of the sides of the hills and the narrow thread winds round them, with often on the one hand a precipice over a hundred feet deep, and no protection beyond a low stone coping or a few inches of rough soil. The drivers are always skilful, and horses bred among the mountains can be trusted to keep their feet, so there is little need for alarm.

Some of these remote valleys have wide and deep rivers and not many bridges. When the river-bank is high on both sides, wire ropes are stretched across and a very simple wooden cage hung on the ropes, and anyone wishing to cross sits on the floor of the cage with his legs dangling over the river-bed and pulls himself to the opposite side. At the Skipper's Gorge we found a cage of this kind, and I was able to enjoy crossing a river in such an unusual way. On a calm day there is no difficulty, but it must be dangerous in a high wind.

The most delightful tracks round Queenstown are either for walking or riding. Whichever way you go—up one of the hills or along a track near Lake Wakatipu, you are always surrounded by wonderful scenery.

From the top of Ben Lomond, at a height of between five and six thousand feet, you look down upon the lake, in colour a bright blue, toning to purple at the sides; rising steeply from the water, and sloping away from it to bare jagged peaks are mountains of five and six thousand feet; while far away, encircling the lake-head, are yet higher peaks, and to east and north, piled one behind the other, peaks and ever more peaks, purple and grey or whitely crowned with snow.

Riding near the lake, you see everything more intimately. There are pines and weeping willows by road or track, gum-trees and poplars in garden and paddock; on the hillside are the tall, fresh, green fronds and the withered, brown ones of the bracken, making an undergrowth for elegant cabbage-trees, sturdy fuchsias and currants, and trailing bush lawyers. Below, in the still, blue water is an exact reflection of each outline of the purple hills above.

A steamer goes on certain days each week from Queenstown to the northern end of the lake. Beyond, after a twelve mile drive, you reach two hotels and some scattered sheep-runs, on the very edge of cultivation. Here are wide river-valleys and tiny lakes, towering mountains and snowy glaciers; and the hills are clothed with magnificent beech forests, through which few people have as yet attempted to penetrate.

I finally left Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown by motor coach. A drive of forty-eight miles took me to Lake Wanaka.

It was a sunny summer day, and all was gay; the hills were blue and the valleys green. As the car zig-zagged up the Crown Range, we looked down on the blue surface of Wakatipu shimmering in the sunlight, and on the windings of the Molyneux River twisting among the hills in ribbons of blue—a blue more vivid and intense than that of the shining sky overhead.

At Wanaka is a tiny township, named Pembroke. Here I stayed at a one-storied wooden hotel of many detached passages and cubicles, all standing in an old-fashioned English garden. This garden had wide herbaceous borders crowded with flowers; tall, drooping willows and excellent vegetables; and among the flower-beds were apple trees, and many plum trees laden with more ripe plums than the proprietor or his guests could possibly eat. There was even a giant mulberry tree, heavily laden with fruit.

From Pembroke, visitors go in an oil launch, capable of holding sixty passengers, on an excursion of forty miles up the lake and picnic at the head of it.

I do not think the reflections on Wanaka are quite so marvellous as on Wakatipu, but the lake as a whole is equally beautiful, and the general plan is the same in both—a long narrow lake among high mountain-peaks.

The mountains which surround Wakatipu are bare of any but small low-growing trees, and on that account you see and enjoy their outlines more perfectly; but on the other hand, the tall, dense forest-growth, which fills many of the mountain gullies and fringes the shore of Wanaka, gives to the landscape an added richness.

As at Wakatipu, the mountains which surround Wanaka are only the foreground for other and higher peaks, stretching ever to the west, purple or streaked with snow.

There are small islands in the lake. At one of these we disembarked, and climbed up a steep track among the scrub. At the top we found, nestling under a rocky crag, a charming lakelet of three acres, at a level of four hundred feet above the main lake. Round the irregular, rocky shore of the tiny lake grow trees—ratas and other smaller ones—leaning over the water; and in the lake are minute islands with little stunted trees—all as though planned by some Japanese artist You stand at the edge of the Japanese garden, and look through its fringing trees and out upon the big blue lake to steep, bare hills beyond.

Pembroke is a centre from which to go deerstalking. I saw no deer, but later in Christchurch I saw fine antlers which some sportsman had bagged.

Coaches and motor cars connect Pembroke with Clyde and the railway of Central Otago.

I chose to go by motor thinking it would be quicker, but alas! the road is rough, and the car broke down; and I had to be picked up by the horse coach, which obligingly ran on the same day.

Clyde is on the edge of the fruit-growing district. At the hotel, I soon made friends with an elderly gentleman who took me to see peaches and apricots growing as standards; and the owner of the trees let me pick as many peaches as I could eat—and very delicious they were!

Next day Clyde had a fruit and flower show in the town hall, and the farmers round all came to exhibit their produce and to see what others were doing. It was a little show, but held much promise of great things in the future.

The peaches were excellent and so were the plums and apples, there were very few apricots, but good, ripe figs and blackberries: the presence of any blackberries at all in the show was perplexing, as throughout New Zealand the English blackberry bramble has grown and spread far too vigorously, and is now considered a "noxious weed," which must be destroyed whenever possible. In the vegetable section were good clean tomatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, beans and carrots. For plants in pots the competition was slight, and a fuchsia and two small heliotropes all won prizes. There were two stiff bouquets and a few table decorations, and on a raised platform, freehand drawings from the primary schools, and several good specimens of embroidery and plain needlework.

The main purpose of the show was to encourage apple growing for export; different kinds were exhibited which are being tested for their flavour and keeping properties, and demonstrations were given in the best way of packing.

The soil round Clyde is white and sandy, and looks barren and hopeless, but I was told that it is really so rich in plant foods, that, given sufficient water, it will grow anything.

The railway from Clyde runs through a queer, wild country of rock and scattered stones; where the only vegetation consists in rare tufts of tussock grass and frequent dabs of pale green moss, which make you think the ground must be turning mouldy from lack of use. There is very little level ground and not much scope for a railroad: the train simply forces its way along, creeping through tunnels, and clinging hardily to the hillsides above steep precipices yawning below.

People do come now and then to meet the train at some wayside station, but there is little traffic in such a desolate land.

Later we ran through deep gorges, whose steep sides have patches of dark bush above the rushing Taieri River. The gorges widen out into the broad Taieri Plain, with its farms and woollen factory; and towards evening the train steamed into Dunedin's smart railway station.

CHAPTER V

THE NEW ZEALAND EDINBURGH

The town of Dunedin is Scotch in name and origin and in the number of its inhabitants who are of Scotch descent, and is renowned for the enterprise of its settlers and the solid worth of its buildings and institutions. It was founded, in 1848, by Scotch Presbyterians; and though there is now an Anglican Bishop of Dunedin, and Ministers of various denominations, Presbyterianism is yet the dominant form of Christianity. Like other New Zealand settlements, the new Scotch colony consisted in its early days of a few small huts at the edge of the forest. A part of one of these huts, made of "wattle and daub," has been preserved, and is to be seen in the "Early Settlers' Hall." Here, too, are portraits of the "old identities," and pictures of the small sailing vessels in which they crossed the ocean, and of Prince's Street, the one street of the embryo town. Such grim, determined faces those early settlers had, and it must have needed all their courage to face life in a strange land among possibly unfriendly natives, with no roads, an almost complete absence of eatable fruits or vegetables, no fresh meat except fish and birds; and in a country covered either with impenetrable forest or rough tussock grass. Now all round Dunedin the forests have been cleared, and the low hills, which rose on either side of Otago Harbour from the Heads to the town wharves, are sown with British grass, and the land is divided up into sheep runs and dairy farms.

[i68]

OTAGO HARBOUR.

To face page 59.

Dunedin itself is a city set on a hill facing the harbour. Half-way up the hill, adding greatly to the health and beauty of the place, is the Town Belt—a broad band of native bush, left uncut between the business part of the town and residential suburbs, to keep for all time a forest way into the open country beyond. From some point above this belt of trees, you may look down upon the present city with the spires and towers of Churches, University and other fine buildings; upon the narrow harbour and the long neck of undulating hilly country, which on the south divides it from the open ocean. On the north are hills and valleys, with a sprinkling of houses and thick groves of trees; and as you walk or ride towards the west, you see a wide green plain stretching inland to distant hills; and immediately below, on the edge of the plain, rise the chimneys of the Mosgiel woollen factory, whose rugs are famous the world over.

Between Prince's Street and the harbour lay in the beginning some furlongs of uninhabitable swamp-land, soon reclaimed by the zeal of the early colonists. These intrepid settlers cut off the top of the small hill on which the chief Presbyterian Church now stands, and with the material thus obtained they filled in the marsh and procured a good foundation for many of their public buildings—railway station, Post Office, University, banks, and the offices of the shipping companies.

The railway station is a very pretty one—the finest in the Dominion—of grey stone, with projecting turrets and tall slender clock-tower, faced with stone and red brick; the trains run into it by way of a dangerous level crossing over a wide street between town and harbour. The Post Office is, like others in colonial towns, a large building, with separate departments for everything: stamps in one room, money orders in another, private letter-boxes in another part, and here the telegraph and cable department is in a distinct block in another street; private letter-boxes are found in New Zealand even in small post offices, deliveries are not very frequent, and people often find it more convenient to fetch their own letters. A New Zealand post office is planned with scrupulous regard to efficiency, and is straightforward enough when you have learnt your way about it, but at first each fresh one is, like the different tramway systems, exceedingly puzzling.

Dunedin publishes three daily newspapers and three weekly ones—a fair number for a town of sixty thousand people—but in New Zealand all towns of any size publish one or more daily papers, and nearly every small country township has a local paper once or twice a week. The weekly papers here and in other large towns have capital illustrations and give news of the world and of New Zealand generally; the daily papers have the latest cables from London and all parts of the world, and for other news are chiefly concerned with the happenings in their own particular town and province; so that in Dunedin you hear very little of what is going on in Auckland.

Dunedin has large public gardens laid out with green lawns and many-coloured flower-beds; in the gardens are greenhouses too, with orchids, palms, high pink begonias and trailing red fuchsias; among groups of dark trees flows the Water of Leith, and on a shady lake swim black swans and Paradise ducks; the latter are native birds of particularly gay and attractive plumage.

In these gardens, as well as in all other public gardens in the Dominion, there is a bandstand where a band plays frequently, and here in the summer the citizens hold garden fêtes. I went with friends to one such fête on a sunny afternoon in March. It was held with the object of obtaining money for the further beautifying of the town by planting waste spaces with trees and flowers. Many hundreds of spectators stood round a large platform, erected for the display of the competitions; there were "poster" competitions for the children, gymnastic exhibitions by different schools, decorated bicycles and go-carts, and children danced with coloured ribbons round a maypole. On the lawns were putting and bowling contests for grownups. Tea was served in big tents, and all who could spent the afternoon either in helping or in being entertained.

Dunedin and Otago generally have the reputation of being the most friendly and hospitable parts of the Dominion: personally I found Dunedin people entirely kind; they took me on trust and made me welcome in the happiest way, and I felt as though I had known them all my life.

CHAPTER VI

AMONG THE SOUTHERN ALPS

My first experience of tourist travelling in New Zealand was a trip to the Southern Alps, with a stay among the mountains of only six days. It was a very short visit, but long enough for something of the fascination of the mountains to take hold of me and bring me back later for several months. From Christchurch the traveller sees, a hundred miles away, on the western side of the Canterbury Plain, the whole range of the Southern Alps, a wonderful rampart of snowy peaks; and it was with eager curiosity that I set out on the journey thither.

Not many years ago the mountains were almost inaccessible and it was necessary to ride the greater part of the way. Now a railway winds up among the southern foothills, and during seven months of the year an excellent service of motor cars runs regularly three days a week between Fairlie, the railroad terminus, and the mountain hostel, ninety-six miles further. Fairlie is a small township, with two hotels, Post Office, a bank and a few shops in its main street. Round about the township are grassy hills with many "cabbage trees," their bare brown stems surrounded by one or more tufts of narrow green streamers, which wave lightly in the breeze: the cabbage tree is a species of lily, and in the early summer has long panicles crowded with creamy white blossoms among the green leaves. It grows on hill, plain or swamp, and always on good soil.

Tourists spend the night at Fairlie, and start in the car next morning punctually at eight o'clock.

This district has all been taken up by settlers for farms and sheep runs. We drove past "paddocks," as all fields are called in New Zealand, white with English ox-eye daisies or dazzlingly yellow with great bushes of broom, and saw homesteads sheltered by clumps of oaks, poplars, willows or pines.

The road climbs steadily uphill to the top of Burke's Pass, more than two thousand feet above sea level, and for the rest of the way goes through "tussock" country, a land of hill and plain covered as far as eye could see with tufts of brown grass. On a rainy day such a landscape, stretching on interminably in one uniform tint of brown has a very desolate appearance, but when the sun shines the brown hills gleam yellow in the distance and develop beautiful purple shadows in their hollows, and big white clouds floating above them make purple shadows too: then, beyond the rounded hills stand blue mountains, rugged and mysterious, their summits streaked with snow. In the heart of the hills you come unexpectedly upon a lovely blue-green lake, six miles long, fed by glacier streams, a blue mountain torrent rushing out of it. Thirty miles further on we reached yet another lake—Lake Pukaki—twice the size of the first, and green rather than blue. Behind this lake, though still forty miles away, we saw Mount Cook, half hidden by clouds. Mount Cook, or as the Maoris called it, "Aorangi, the Sky Piercer," is 12,349 feet in height, the Monarch of the Southern Alps, and the loftiest mountain in New Zealand. The Maoris gave names to many of the high peaks in both islands, but knew them only from afar; they regarded them with reverent awe and had no wish to invade their solitudes. The honour of being the first to reach the summit of Mount Cook rests with three New Zealanders, who climbed it successfully on Christmas Day, 1894.

[i77]

ROAD BETWEEN FAIRLIE AND THE HERMITAGE.

To face page 66.

The tussock country is devoted to sheep runs, varying in size from one thousand to twenty thousand acres; the runs used to be as large as sixty thousand acres, but all the larger runs have now been split up by Government with a view to closer settlement. Merinos and crossbreds thrive very well, but as from three to five acres are needed to support one sheep, the runs need to be a fair size. Between the tufts of tussock grow some finer grasses, and English white clover and sorrel are gradually spreading; the tussock grass is often burnt in patches, so that the sheep may have the fresh shoots which spring up from its roots. Wire fences divide the runs, and at intervals are posted collie dogs, with a barrel for kennel, to keep a watchful eye on their masters' sheep; houses are very rare, ten miles or more apart, the older ones surrounded by flourishing trees.

The road is kept in repair by men who go about with carts and long shovels and collect stones from the bank or any convenient pit by the roadside. There are stones everywhere, large and small, carried down from the mountains in the far-away days when all the valleys were filled with enormous glaciers. The road-menders are paid nine shillings a day, wet or fine; in wet weather they do no work, but as they have no fixed homes and sleep where they can, it is not a life to be envied. Every few miles along the road are posts with hooks—generally old horseshoes—and on the hooks, as the car went by, the driver hung the mail bags, and as a rule, a man on horseback came trotting up to fetch them. The telephone wire runs close to the road the whole way, and the tourist cars are provided with spare wires, which can be attached in case of need.

On leaving Lake Pukaki, the road skirts the hillside above a valley some four miles wide, where on the right the Tasman River flows through a level swamp. In front, ever growing nearer, are the High Alps, range behind range, at first green or brown, then grey and purple, with glaciers gleaming whitely among the shadows.

Our destination, in December, 1912, was the Old Hermitage, and this we safely reached punctually at 5 p.m.

The Old Hermitage was a small hotel managed by the New Zealand Government Tourist Department. It was a comfortable, one-storied building, made of "cob"—a mixture of clay and grass—boarded inside, and with an outer casing made of corrugated iron. It was the first house built in New Zealand for the accommodation of climbers and has been a delight to many visitors; during the last few years it has proved far too small, and in 1912 a big hotel was being built on a better site, a mile away from the old one.

The old house stands in a hollow at the very foot of the mountains, with the verandah facing Sefton's snowy peak. On either side of it are other mountains cleft by deep gullies, and to the sides of gullies and mountains cling hardy Alpine shrubs, while above the vegetation come shingle slopes and naked brown rock, and higher still, at about 5,000 feet, the unmelting snow.

Most of the tourists who stop at the Hermitage for longer than one night wish to go for some excursion up one of the glaciers or mountains. The particular expedition that newcomers generally take is one to the Hooker Glacier with a night spent in an Alpine hut. At the Hermitage everything is provided by Government—guides, horses, alpenstocks or ice-axes, puttees, and even climbing boots. The Government boots are well made and kept in many sizes for hire, but the more comfortable plan is to take strong boots and have nails put in them.

The head guide decided that I, like other "new chums," should go with a party of ladies to the Hooker, so off we set, carrying alpenstocks, and feeling very important; the head guide himself came with us, taking in his rucksack any clothes we needed as well as food. Our road lay up the valley, over ancient moraines covered with scanty tussock grass, low-growing brooms, heaths and dainty Alpine flowers. The New Zealand Alpine flowers are usually white—helichrysums, daisies or heaths; though sometimes the daisies are yellow, and there are mauve campanulas, and the white violets have streaks of mauve. To-day we saw, growing in profusion, clumps of yellow spear-grass, its leaves half an inch wide with points like needles, and bearing long spikes of dull yellow flowers—a plant known as "Spaniards" and very handsome, but best admired at a respectful distance.

All the centre of this valley is filled with ice many feet thick, piled high with boulders large and small, and powdered over everywhere with grey dust; the Mueller Glacier which comes down from Mount Sefton brings with it an amazing amount of débris, and its terminal face is hardly visible; all is a weird scene of unrelieved desolation—one vast rubbish heap—and only on looking very closely where a glint of white or green shows through the silt, can you feel assured that the foundation of it is ice and not solid rock. We crossed the Hooker River by two suspension bridges—wooden planks hung on chains, which sway alarmingly in the wind, while the torrent brawls noisily many feet below, and walked along a narrow track up the Hooker Valley.

Here we found ourselves among the Mount Cook lilies in full flower, by the river and up the hill sides, and at our feet in sheets of white among the stones—a perfect natural rock-garden. These so-called lilies are a species of ranunculus (Ranunculus Lyallii), they have smooth green stalks two feet high, and the flowers are in clusters, five to nine flowers on each stem, the individual flowers two inches across, pure white petals round bright yellow centres; the leaves stand below the flower heads, every leafstalk bearing a green cup—it is a large and perfect cup, and can be used to drink from, and after rain you find water waiting for the thirsty traveller. Other Alpine plants were here too—big white daisies with fleshy green leaves, yellow mountain celandines, many small-leaved native shrubs, and intruding patches of red English sorrel. Under a huge boulder, surrounded by lilies, we had our lunch of sandwiches and tea, and it was here that I first learnt the excellence of tea made in a "billy." The billy is a tin pail, large or small, and takes the place of both kettle and teapot, as when the water boils tea is sprinkled into it, the lid is left on for a few minutes and the tea is poured straight from the billy into the cups.

[i85]

MOUNT COOK LILIES.

To face page 72.

After a rough scramble among stones and over noisy streams hurrying to join the glacier below, early in the afternoon we reached the Hooker Hut, set in a level space against the mountain side. In front of the hut are the peaks of the Mount Cook Range—bare brown rock below, but always snow on their summits. At the foot of a steep cliff flows the Hooker Glacier, and at the head of the glacier towers Mount Cook, a mighty, snow-clad giant. The hut itself is, like most of the New Zealand Alpine huts, a serviceable building of corrugated iron on a framework of wood, lined with thick linoleum. This one is divided into two rooms with six bunks in each; one room for the ladies' bedroom, and the other to serve as living room and men's bedroom. The living room has a table, two large chests, benches and a kerosene oil-stove.

The only living creatures we saw by the hut were the mountain parrots—"keas" as they are called in imitation of their cry which often resembles the word "ke-a" shrieked slowly and harshly; they have many calls and sometimes remind one of a whining puppy, sometimes of a crying baby, and on a wet day a kea will sit on a rock and croak until the dismal monotony of his cry compels you to speak severely and shy stones at him. They have black, curved parrot beaks and sage-green plumage, and when they fly, disclose pretty red backs, and a patch of red feathers on either wing. They are most friendly, inquisitive birds, and came up to the door of the hut and took the greatest interest in our doings.

Our guide gave us a good dinner of hot soup, cold mutton, boiled tomatoes, canned apricots and tea. Soon after dinner we turned in. The bunks have wooden sides with strong canvas nailed across. On the canvas is laid a soft down mattress, and with the addition of a pillow and many grey blankets you have a very comfortable bed. Keas seem to need very little sleep; they roosted on the roof of the hut, and apparently overbalanced when asleep and went slipping down the iron over our heads. Finally they gave it up, and began calling to one another long before it was light. The only other sounds were of occasional avalanches slipping down the mountain sides. We got up at 5 a.m., and by 7 o'clock started for the glacier, along a very rough track over the moraine, then across patches of dirty snow. At last we were on the glacier and walked over the snow a couple of miles towards Mount Cook, getting good distant views of mountains and glaciers. So early in the season the glacier is covered with last winter's snow, only here and there are there crevasses wide and deep enough to show the beautiful green ice tints. Our feet sank into the snow at every step; and after a luncheon of sardine sandwiches and iced pineapple, which we ate sitting on our alpenstocks in the middle of the glacier, we were glad to turn and regain the track.

When next I stayed at the Hermitage, fifteen months later, the new hotel had just been opened, and was crowded with tourists coming and going. The time was early autumn and the weather perfect, with cold nights and days of glorious sunshine, and I was able to see far more of the mountains than had been possible before.

On the river flats, except for white gentians and mauve or white campanulas, most of the flowers were over; but in their place glowed berries of red, yellow, white, blue or black; and near the snow line was the New Zealand edelweiss, with quaint grey flower and leaf. After the hot summer the glaciers were very much broken, with the surface snow melted and the ice foundation traversed by many crevasses of ten to a hundred feet; and walking on the narrow ice ridges between the crevasses needed a steady head and well nailed boots.

The largest glacier in New Zealand is the Tasman Glacier, which is eighteen miles long, and at its widest two and a half miles across. It flows parallel with the main Divide of the Alps, receiving several tributary glaciers in its course, until it ends abruptly in a high wall of stones and dirty grey ice, five miles from the Hermitage. To reach the head of the glacier is a two days' expedition. On the first day you ride for fourteen miles on horseback along a narrow track, which for part of the way is a mere scratch on the side of the mountain high above the glacier bed. After one night in a hut you then, if the weather is fine, go on the next day for a ten mile tramp over the solid ice.

Right at the head of the Tasman, on a little plateau two or three hundred feet above the glacier, has been built a narrow stone platform on which stands a tiny hut. It is almost on the snow line, and the only vegetation is the wiry snow grass and a few intrepid gentians and lilies, which find shelter against great boulders. No keas venture so high, only a stray gull had flown up from the river valleys.

Standing outside the hut I saw, under perfect conditions, one of the grandest mountain views to be found in New Zealand or any other country. Facing me was a mighty wall of mountains—all the highest peaks of the Southern Alps, giants of nine to twelve thousand feet, with snowy summits and great snowfields and buttresses of naked rock. On the extreme right, a dome of pure white snow, over nine thousand feet high; and, encircling its base, the beginning of the Tasman glacier, a great expanse of snow ever feeding the great ice river, whose course could be seen for twelve miles, sweeping majestically underneath the mountains, until, beyond Mount Cook, it was hidden by a spur of the range on which I stood. Mount Cook fitly dominated the scene, a thousand feet higher than any other mountain, with its summit a long toothed ridge of snow-clad peaks. I watched while the sun set and all the glacier lay in shadow: soon the snows of the lower slopes of the mountains became a cold, dead white, while their summits flushed with deep rose-colour against pure blue sky.

CHAPTER VII

CHRISTCHURCH

Christchurch ranks next to Auckland as the second largest city in the Dominion, and in its general plan and social atmosphere is the most English of New Zealand towns. It was founded in 1850 by members of the "Canterbury Association," with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, as a settlement in connection with the Church of England, and was named after Christchurch College, Oxford. The exclusive character of the colony was soon found to be impracticable—all colonists were made welcome, and at the present time, Christchurch is sometimes spoken of as the happy home of cranks.

When the first colonists, the "Canterbury Pilgrims," as they were called, reached New Zealand, they landed ten miles from the city of to-day, at a port which they named Lyttleton, and the first rough huts were built at the entrance to a long and sheltered harbour running inland between wooded hills. Lyttleton is still the port of Christchurch, and is connected with it by a railway tunnelling through the hills. Christchurch itself stands on the edge of the Canterbury Plain, with the Port Hills on the south, the ocean on the east, and unlimited space for growth on the north and west.

In the centre of the city is the Cathedral, a fine building of grey stone with a noticeable spire, standing in an open grassy square. Round this square are set shops, hotels and the Post Office. From the Cathedral Square many roads radiate, and electric trams run in all directions—out into the country, or down to the sea shore, five miles away. The streets are straight and at right angles, and bear the names of English Cathedral cities—Hereford, Gloucester, Durham or Salisbury—but High Street runs diagonally through the squares; and the river Avon, bridged by many picturesque bridges of stone or wood, winds through the town, preventing any possibility of crowding or primness.

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RIVER AVON AT CHRISTCHURCH IN WINTER.

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All the streets are wide, and the river banks are green with grass and rushes. In the streets and along the riverside grow English oaks, sycamores, poplars or birches, and, more striking than all, hundreds of weeping willows which here grow to a great height, their supple branches drooping gracefully into the water. I have never seen English woodland trees so beautiful in an English autumn as the same trees are in Christchurch, where the leaves remain on the trees later than at Home, and each leaf turns a vivid yellow—a very pageant of gold in the clear bright sunlight under a cloudless sky.

On one side of the town, the Avon flows through five hundred acres of park-land, part of which is highly cultivated and planted with flowers and trees from all parts of the world—a lovely garden with trim lawns and shady, gravelled paths. The greater part of the reserve is kept as a recreation ground for football, golf and tennis; and has also broad, tree-shaded avenues, down which you may canter on horseback, and see beyond the trees the blue rounded summits of the Port Hills, and many miles away to the west, the snowy peaks of the Southern Alps.

In addition to the Cathedral, Christchurch has many other churches and very fine public buildings. Most of them are built of grey stone, and all stand in prominent places, where they can easily be found and admired. The Supreme Court of Law is on a grassy knoll above the river; the Municipal Buildings and the Public Library among groups of trees on the riverside; and close to the public gardens are the Museum, the University buildings of Canterbury College, and another group of buildings known as Christ's College—a big school for boys, founded on the model of an English Public School.

Christchurch Museum, like the one at Wellington, has a fine Maori house with its series of carved ancestral figures; and here the walls are of reed left intact as the Maoris made them, and the house has on the outside a very ornamental display of painting in a bold freehand pattern, coloured red, white and blue. There are rare and beautiful examples of Maori cloaks; one of flax, with the feathers from pigeons' necks woven in closely, so that you see a rich blue and green feather garment; another was made of strips of dog-skin woven in with the flax; another had white dogs' tails, and yet another had feathers of the native kiwi, a soft grey, like those of the emu or the extinct moa. There are many curiosities from the islands of the Pacific; a large and fragile canoe made of thick reeds fastened together with reed thongs from the Chatham Islands; and from some island further north a most gruesome curio—a record of a cannibal feast—a log of wood bound with flax to a smaller piece, and between the two a neat bundle of human bones. In an annexe built specially to receive it is the skeleton of a great whale, eighty-seven feet long, washed ashore on the west coast a few years ago. One pathetic and modern treasure is a memento of Captain Scott's expedition—a small silken New Zealand flag, a combination of the Union Jack and the Southern Cross—worked for Dr. Wilson by a Christchurch lady. The flag was stitched to his shirt and went with him to the South Pole and was brought back by the relief party.

Christchurch has an Art Gallery with a small permanent collection of paintings, and in it exhibitions are held of Arts and Crafts—pictures, wood-carving, bookbinding or embroidery—to encourage local talent; also a theatre, music halls and picture-palaces, and halls for dances and lectures. In one big hall was held, while I was staying in Christchurch, a series of the "Dominion Literary and Musical Competitions." They lasted for several weeks; and men, women and children from all parts of the Dominion, "from Auckland to the Bluff," came to compete in singing, instrumental music, recitations and impromptu speeches; the judges were well-known men from Melbourne, and the general public was admitted. Many of the songs and recitations were excellent, and all were rendered without shyness or hesitation.

There are delightful homes in and around Christchurch—houses large and small, always with some garden-space; and on the outskirts, many of the houses have large gardens, excellently planned and cared for. Sometimes the larger houses are of brick; but as a rule, private houses are of wood and have roofs of corrugated iron; though some newer roofs are of curved Marseilles tiles, or of flat red tiles made in New Zealand. Every house has its outside verandah, used all the year round as a sitting room, and often in summer as a bedroom too.

In the hot weather it is easy to leave Christchurch, either for the mountains or the coast. Many residents have little wooden cottages or huts at the foot of the Port Hills, where there is a wonderful beach of smooth grey sand running northwards in a forty mile curve. Others seek recreation in fishing up one of the rivers of the Canterbury Plain.

Always the holiday may be taken in the open air to an extent which in England is seldom possible.

CHAPTER VIII

FROM CHRISTCHURCH TO THE WEST COAST

At 8.30 one autumn morning, I left Christchurch, the City of the Plains, to travel across New Zealand from the Pacific Ocean to the Tasman Sea. The railway line runs westward through the great Canterbury Plain, a fertile country containing some of the best land in New Zealand for all kinds of farming. Long ago this plain must have been covered with bush, for early settlers tell how in ploughing they used to find the decayed stumps of forest trees; now, on either side of the railway line, are fields of grass or ploughed land—"paddocks," as they are uniformly termed—paddocks of many acres, divided from one another by green hedges of hawthorn or gorse. Scattered among them are homesteads and farm buildings, all usually of wood with iron roofs, and round about the homesteads are gardens, with fruit trees, poplars, drooping willows, oaks or sycamores, the tall dark-foliaged "pinus insignis" from North America, and the bright green sturdy "macrocarpa" pine from California. Often, too, you pass a grove of Australian gums, the clean grey trunks of the full-grown trees erect amid an undergrowth of young blue-grey leaves.

There are flourishing little townships along the line, often bearing familiar English names, such as Malvern or Sheffield. Forty miles from Christchurch, the plain begins gradually to give way to low hills, outliers of the distant Southern Alps; and after winding up among them for another twenty miles the train reaches Cass, the terminus. At Cass passengers are transferred to coaches drawn by horses, which take them over the mountain pass dividing Canterbury from Westland.

It is a wonderful mountain drive of twenty-six miles, and will in a few years' time be superseded by the new railway line which is to connect Cass with the West Coast by way of the Otira tunnel. This tunnel is a difficult piece of engineering work, boring five miles through the mountain and under a river bed. So far, only two and a half miles of it is finished. Coach road and railway line follow the course of a wide river bed, an expanse of rough grey shingle and big stones, at its widest a mile across. The river was just now a deep narrow stream in the middle of the stones, but in flood it becomes a mighty and swift-flowing torrent. We forded the stream without difficulty, the water only reaching to the horses' knees. Then on up another valley beside another wide shingly river, which became a narrow mountain stream as we followed its course. High bush-covered hills were on either side, so high that at three in the afternoon we drove in shadow, and watched the sunlight shining on the opposite ranges. All along this valley are scattered the huts of the men employed on the line, some of them tiny "wharés" of calico stretched over a wooden framework, with chimneys of corrugated iron or wood; better dwellings made of wood roofed with iron, and usually only one small window; and there was one smart house with a verandah—in this the chief engineer had been living. Bonny children were playing about, and in the centre of the railwaymen's township was the school with the school-mistress's cottage—both of wood painted red.

We could see the entrance to the Otira tunnel on the hillside above us, and soon we began the ascent of the pass, up a steep winding road, and on reaching the summit, two thousand feet above sea-level, left Canterbury behind us, and descended by an even steeper road down into Westland. The Otira Gorge is far-famed, and tourists come many miles to see it. Mountains covered with forest tower up on either side, sombre and magnificent; in front are still higher mountains, their snowy summits glittering in the sunshine, and far away at the bottom of the ravine flows the Otira river, a brawling mountain torrent. Ever the road winds steadily down, cut from the hillside, in places supported on stays of wood or iron driven into the rock, and at some places dangerously insecure, where the face of the cliff consists only of loose rubble, and the road has no solid foundation, and is liable to disappear after storm and flood. There had been a slip only a few weeks before, but the new track was safe enough as we drove over it; the five horses were driven quickly, too, at a sharp trot all the way. The forest on the eastern slope of the pass is almost entirely of beech trees—tall and graceful, with small, glossy, green leaves, evergreen for the most part, and which remain on the trees through the winter, though in autumn some of them turn yellow or red. On the western side are beeches too, but among them grow many pines and other trees: the ferns and mosses are more luxuriant than on the eastern slopes, while here and there you catch sight of a waterfall rushing down a steep crag among the trees.

From Otira township a two hours' journey by train takes the traveller on to Greymouth, which is reached just twelve hours after leaving Christchurch.

Greymouth is a small township situated on the coast, built upon level land at the mouth of the Grey River, which is wide enough to serve as a harbour for ships of fair size, principally cargo boats. The bar outside is sometimes so rough that ships can neither enter nor leave, and Greymouth people would be glad of half a million pounds with which to construct a better harbour. Most of the houses are of wood and iron, the shops have outside verandahs, and the roofs are usually painted red. There is a church of grey stone with a spire, and other churches of less imposing appearance; a large red brick post-office with a tall clock tower, as well as several banks and hotels. Forty years ago, when gold was found in abundance all along the west coast, Greymouth was a gayer and more thriving town than it is to-day. It is now a coal mining centre and a market for dairy produce.

Next day I left Greymouth, and went on by train to Hokitika, twenty-eight miles away, travelling through the bush all the time. There are clearings at intervals, with some sawmills at work, and in other parts cattle and sheep grazing, and round Hokitika is plenty of open country suitable for farmland.

Hokitika is just such another town as Greymouth, but smaller, with a population of between two and three thousand. It, too, has houses with red roofs, banks and hotels. In addition it has a fine clock tower, set in an open space, and is the proud possessor of a Carnegie Library of solid stone; in the reading room of the Library I looked at a London Graphic only six weeks old. Hokitika is only a few miles from Kumara, the home of Mr. Dick Seddon, the late Premier, and Hokitika and the West Coast generally owe a great deal to his interest in their welfare.

Twelve miles from Hokitika, away to the east, is a lake called Lake Kanieri, which I had been told was beautiful, so next morning I hired a horse and went for a twelve mile ride along a road through the forest in search of it. I found it well worth seeing—a lake five miles long and two wide, surrounded on all sides by forest, hills behind hills at the head of the lake, the most distant streaked with snow. It was a dull day, with a strong wind blowing from the lake, and the yellow-grey waves came dashing against the shore in a line of white surf, like the breakers of some inland sea. The distant mountains were deep purple, an intense, almost black shade, toning into the dark green of the nearer hills.

From Hokitika the train took me on for another twenty miles to Ross. I arrived there at sunset, a glorious sunset over the sea—all crimson and gold—which turned Ross into an enchanted city of grey mist, surrounded by low hills and trees bathed in a pink glow.

Ross is a little town of seven hundred inhabitants, but it is brilliantly lighted by electricity, and boasts four churches—Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Wesleyan—and it has seven public houses.

My further journey of seventy miles south was in the mail coach, drawn by a team of four horses. We set forth at seven-thirty in a grey dawn, which soon changed to a day of brilliant sunshine.

Just outside Ross is a gold mine, worked by electricity, on the latest and most improved American methods. The power is brought twenty-five miles from a waterfall near Kanieri Lake. Great things are hoped from this mine, but at present there is so much water in the workings that most of the time is taken up with pumping out some millions of gallons a day. Beyond the mine we saw a gold sluicing claim, with long wooden troughs running down from the hill side. A great force of water is brought through an iron hose-pipe and directed against the rocks, which it tears down; the fragments of earth fall into the wooden troughs, the sand and gravel are washed away, while the gold stays at the bottom.

Very soon we had our last sight of the sea, and for the rest of the way drove through the forest. The West Coast forest extends for three hundred miles between the sea and the Southern Alps, and to the north of the Alps as well—a narrow strip of country varying in width from fifteen to thirty miles, and I think that the further south you go the more beautiful it becomes. It is a semi-tropical forest in appearance, with its countless groves of tall and slender tree-ferns, with their rough brown stems and thick heads of drooping feathery fronds, a yard and more in length, and with its amazingly luxuriant undergrowth of trailing creepers and lianes, while daintiest ferns, mosses and lichens grow everywhere round and upon the forest trees. The Westland forest trees are mighty giants, and chief among them is the red pine or "rimu," as the Maoris call it. This tree towers straight up to a height of a hundred feet or so, then it branches out into a head of thick stems, becoming quite slender at their tips, and drooping gracefully towards the ground, clothed with long, coppery-green tassels, hardly leaves at all, but green scales packed closely together, and giving the tree the effect of being dressed in a "gay green gown" of shaggy moss. Then there is the white pine, growing best in swampy places, its enormous trunk buttressed like the clustered pillars of a mighty church, at first bare, and then showing dense tufts of green bristly spines high up against the sky; the black pine too, with grey trunk and very dark green spines. Less tall than the pines is the red birch or beech—the names are interchangeable in Westland—its leaves the size of elm-tree leaves, but thicker and more glossy, and all the branches now bearing bunches of dead, brown flowers. Of the same size as the beech is the "miro," a tree with smaller but equally glossy leaves, and berries beloved of the New Zealand wood pigeon. The "totara" is a tree that reminds one of the English yew, but its narrow leaves are longer and of a yellower green. Enormous "rata" trees grow in this bush, their branches thickly covered with myrtle-shaped leaves; the crimson flower was quite over on the big trees, but on the rata-vine which drapes many of the forest trees were still patches of red blossom among the green. Close to the road were giant fuchsia trees, with either yellow leaves or bare branches, for the fuchsia is one of the few trees that sheds its leaves in winter.

One of the strangest trees is the lancewood, which, when young, bears long narrow leaves like lances, pointing stiffly to the ground; after some years' growth, the leaves become broader and shorter and no longer point downwards, they grow straight out or point towards the sky. Other New Zealand trees have this curious habit of bearing different kinds of leaves at different stages of their growth, and botanists see in it a reminiscence of the changes that the plants' ancestors have lived through—varying leaves suited to variations in the climate.

The New Zealand bush is for the most part a sombre forest of many shades of green; though now the fuchsia is yellow, and the pepper-tree's leaves are green and pink; while in spring the clematis festoons the bush with masses of starry white blossoms; in summer the rata blazes crimson, tree-veronicas and olearias show purple and white, and the ribbon-wood bears the loveliest clusters of fragile white flowers. When the sun shines, you forget that you ever thought the bush sombre, so enchanting is the effect of light and shade on stem and leaf. Shafts of sunlight glint through the forest as through the aisles of some vast cathedral, bringing into strong relief the waving light-green fronds of stately tree-ferns, making a glorious harmony of green and gold, "all glossy glooms and shifting sheen."

There is very little bare space in the Westland bush: all the plants grow close together, struggling for their share of sunlight and air; creepers climb to the tops of trees, and hang down in long festoons; plants with long, lily-like leaves perch among the branches, and sometimes hide the whole trunk with their drooping greenery. Ferns of many species cover the ground and live high up on the trees, and such lovely ferns they are: some have bright, glossy fronds from six to eight feet long; there is bracken, tall, with thick wiry leaves; or short and fragile, its fronds like the most delicate green lace. The ferns that live on the tree-trunks have usually short fronds, but sometimes they are over a foot in length; the polypods are thick and shining, the "filmy" ferns of such delicate texture that you can almost see through them. The kidney fern, "trichomanes reniforme," is one of these transparent ferns and grows in great abundance on the trees; it is shaped in exact accordance with its name, and has its spores arranged round the edge of the frond like a neat brown frill. There are beautiful club mosses trailing over the ferns and draping the banks by the roadside with garlands of bronze and green; and painted in for the ground colour are green mosses and grey lichens, all shades of grey and green with touches of copper; and on smooth banks coral red berries lying among the mosses.

Every few miles we came to homesteads and clearings, where the bush has been cut down and burnt, and grass sown for grazing; the ground is too cold and damp for corn, but grass grows well and sheep and cattle thrive. It seems sad to destroy such beautiful forest, but settlers cannot make a living out of the bush, and as Government is wisely keeping two or three chains of forest all along the road on either side as well as other big areas of forest country, there is no fear that the bush will entirely disappear before the settler's axe.

During our seventy mile drive, we crossed several rivers and creeks; only three of the rivers are bridged, the others must be forded; it was easy work, as the rivers were low, but in flood time they become roaring torrents, rushing over wide river-beds filled with big boulders and rough shingle, and many lives have been lost in the attempt to cross. From all the open spaces we had lovely views of distant mountains, deep blue behind the green tints of nearer trees, and often tall rimus standing out from the forest, bronze tassels against a background of blue. It is not a level road all the way—at one point I got down and walked on up a hill between three and four miles, and looking back had a wonderful view over the valley. I stood among the trees at the top, looking down upon the forest stretching away for miles in billowy curves to right and left, a blue haze over its greenness; and beyond, in the far background, a mountain crowned with snow.

We passed three charming lakes, each one many acres in extent, and all with trees right down to the water's edge, the ground rising away from the water in gentle slopes. From the hill above one of these lakes, we saw the snowy peaks of Tasman and Cook, fifty miles away. On swampy land grows the New Zealand flax (phormium tenax), which is now being exported in some quantity to Japan for use in the manufacture of silk, and to Ireland to be used in making linen.

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THE WESTLAND FOREST.

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At 1 p.m. on the second day after leaving Ross, we came to the end of our journey—a solitary hotel, nestling under the mountains; and the driver pointed out to me with pride the Franz Josef Glacier, coming grandly down between the mountains to meet the forest, only three miles from the hotel.

CHAPTER IX

THREE WEEKS IN WESTLAND

South Westland is a land apart from the rest of New Zealand—cut off by the mountains—an enchanted land, which if you once learn to know and love you never wish to leave, and when you do go away, you must always be wanting to return. It is a land of mountain and forest, of glacier and waterfall and rushing river, of blue sky and wide ocean. I first saw it in late autumn, when day after day the sun shone with steady radiance, warming you through and through as if it were still summer; bell-birds and tuis called to one another in the trees, and merry fantails darted hither and thither in the sun, catching sandflies, and spreading out their tails of brown or black-and-white stripes, like miniature fans. The district has a yearly rainfall of over a hundred inches, and to this owes the extreme luxuriance of its forests and the beauty of its many streams. It is a different world from the Alpine region on the east, where the mountains are grand with a grandeur of snowy summit and bare brown rock, and trees are few and stunted. In Westland you see the same peaks of snow, but they rise behind ranges clad in stately forests, shrouded often in mysterious violet tints; the glaciers which fall steeply down the mountain sides are bordered by tall trees; in summer the crimson rata blooms against the snow, and in May little white orchids were in flower only a few feet from the ice.

I went to Waiho Gorge intending to spend a week there, but stayed for three, and the following year I returned and remained for two months. The hotel stands in a cleared space in the forest, on a gentle slope overlooking the Waiho river valley—a wide flat with grass and trees. The Franz Josef Glacier is three miles away, and the road to it is no rough and stony track, but a moss-grown path through bush of more than usual loveliness. Here the sunlight, filtering through interlacing branches, shines on great cushions of green moss, on the rich green fronds of many crape ferns with curling feathery tips, and everywhere soil and tree-stems alike are clothed with ferns, lichens, liverworts and mosses in bewildering profusion and most satisfying beauty.

The Franz Josef Glacier is three-quarters of a mile wide and eight miles long, and flows to within six hundred feet of sea level, it is fed by another smaller glacier, and by vast snowfields lying among the mountains at its head. Its bed is far steeper than the Tasman, and the rate of flow much quicker, so the surface changes continually, and is broken up into the most extraordinary ridges and pinnacles of every conceivable shape and size; the pinnacles stand up like great teeth of ice, crevasses vary in depth from ten feet to a hundred, and the narrow ridges between are often cut short by other crevasses at right angles, making climbing among them tedious and difficult. A few years ago a hanging gallery of wooden steps on iron staples was erected in the hillside near the terminal face, forty feet above the level of the glacier; within six months the glacier rose up in a gigantic ice-wave and tore down the gallery like a child's toy; it then began to subside, and, when I saw it, was almost at its former level; but the gallery has not been replaced, and a few tattered planks still hang from the cliff.

The Franz Josef is almost free from moraine, though there are a few grey rocks and stones and coarse silt scattered about on the ice above the terminal face, which in the centre of the glacier is a sheer ice-wall, two hundred feet high. The Waiho River rises here, in an amphitheatre of blue and white ice, sometimes at one point, sometimes at another; great blocks of ice are constantly breaking away at the snout, and the river escapes wherever it can force its way. The ice of the Franz Josef has the most beautiful colouring; there are caves of clearest crystal, or of white ice faintly tinged with blue, and many moulins and ice-bridges of an intense, bright blue. From Waiho, the Franz Josef forms the nearest highway across the Alps into Canterbury—a long climb up the glacier and over the snowy saddle at its head, then down the steep slope of another glacier to the Tasman.

On my first visit, under the careful guidance of a Westland guide whose home is at Waiho, and who knows and loves the glacier and mountains as his intimate friends, I explored the lower slopes of the Franz Josef. We went together as far up the glacier as a hut which had just been built, three hours' climb from the terminal face.

At this point a rocky mountain spur juts out into the glacier—Cape Defiance it is aptly named—and on this spur, some few hundred feet above the glacier, a little platform has been levelled, and a hut of wood and iron put up. It is like the hut by the Hooker Glacier on the other side of the Alps, and is divided by a wooden partition into two rooms, with six bunks in each room, but instead of an oil stove, the Cape Defiance Hut has an open fireplace made of flat grey stones from the mountain side. The hut is perfectly fitted together; and every strip of corrugated iron and wood used in it has been carried on men's backs up the glacier in loads of fifty to sixty pounds—there is no other way, and the two men who did it all needed to be mountaineers as well as carpenters.

This hut was put up at Government expense, it is provisioned and kept going by private enterprise, and the guiding in Westland is in private hands.

Round the hut grow ferns and a bushy tangle of ribbon-wood, broom and coprosma trees, and from its windows you look up towards the head of the glacier or across to the mountains on the opposite side, and on the far side of a small tributary glacier behind Cape Defiance, you hear a waterfall thundering down from a height of a thousand feet. The first winter snow had fallen and the whole glacier was covered with fresh snow, making walking easier over the slippery ice, but as we climbed higher the snow was deeper—almost up to my knees—and when after sunset we reached the hut, we found it half-buried in snow, with snow-drifts two or three feet deep all round it.

The snow was speedily shovelled away, and a cheerful log fire soon blazed on the open hearth.

At eight o'clock that night the moon rose, full and brilliant, and from the door of the hut we saw glacier and mountains distinct in the moonlight: at our feet the full width of the glacier, its uneven edges stretching upwards to a great ice-fall of white and towering pinnacles, its lower slopes vanishing into the night: meeting the snow of the glacier was the fresh white snow of the mountains rising from it—an unbroken expanse of snow low down, but above a mingling of brown rock and whiteness against the blue sky, and the blue was a deep violet shade, changing to sapphire where the clear moon shone serenely. Very few stars were visible, but one planet gleamed like a lamp over the crest of the mountain opposite, and above our heads shone the Southern Cross—the five stars of the cross guarded by two bright pointers, shining even more brilliantly than the Cross itself—while over the glacier, behind the topmost pinnacles, floated a few soft, white, fleecy clouds.

I was the first lady to sleep in the Cape Defiance Hut, and found my bunk most comfortable with mattress and blankets, and for pillow, a spare blanket slipped inside a pillow-slip. I was offered a hot water bottle, but declined that, and though water in my room froze during the night, I was perfectly warm.

Next morning before I got up my guide brought me a cup of tea and a biscuit, then hot water in a billy for me to wash in. For breakfast I had a poached egg served on hot buttered toast, and cups of delicious coffee—and all these luxuries on the edge of a glacier!

The snow was too deep for us to go higher on the glacier, so we climbed a short way up the mountain behind the hut, where we found a convenient bare patch, sheltered by an overhanging rock, and could sit down on the rucksack and study the view.

We were only two thousand feet above sea level, and there in front of us was the Tasman Sea, its irregular coastline sixteen miles distant; the sea was a smooth grey, backed by level grey and yellow clouds—a quiet, lonely sea, and on its surface no faintest trace of fishing boat or steamer.

Just within the coastline glimmered the waters of a peaceful lagoon, and to the right, among the trees, shone a large lake, the surface ruffled by wind, which gave the effect of a fringe of snow on the far side. Between the foot of the glacier and the sea flowed the Waiho River, blue amid the pearly shingle of its wide bed. There is flat land sparsely covered with rough grass and shrub on both sides of the Waiho, then between river and sea stretch ridge behind ridge of low bush-covered hills, the furthest jutting out steeply into the ocean.

Beyond the glacier, on the opposite side to where we sat, lies a long level ridge, densely clothed with forest trees, and over them lay the snow gradually melting in the hot sun. Behind the wooded range are higher mountains, and at right angles to them, covering the lower levels, are miles of forest, deep green at first, paling through greens and greys to dimmest grey, where the line of forest meets the dim, grey sea.

Looking up the glacier, we could see two rocky peaks which stand some miles above the head, but not the actual head of the glacier, or the snowfield which feeds it. As we saw it that morning the Franz Josef was one magnificent ice-fall—the topmost ridge of huge ice-crags sharply outlined against the blue, and then a steep descent of rough broken ice, and over all a spotless mantle of snow, white and glistening in the sunshine: mountain and glacier and snow-sprinkled forests combined to make one glorious scene of wintry splendour.