Alys Lowth

“ We clambered over the boulders to go down to the mouth of the cave, and there found that right at the bottom there is a hot spring, or lake, which gives to the place its warm and humid atmosphere. It is a beautiful as well as a wonderful place. Standing at the side of the lake we looked up on our right to the fernery, only a small patch of sky showing between the green roof of tree-fern which met the overarching cliff above us, and below was the half-hidden steaming lake, with all around us the debris of multi-coloured chalks and alum lying just as they had fallen from the sliff. ”

“ One looks down and round on to a gruesome company of conical hillocks closely clustered, all whitey-grey with ashes, and absolutely devoid of vegetation save for some starved tufts of a kind of pampas-grass; immediately below the house is the Frying-pan, with its bubbles dancing in the sun, surrounded by the steam from the geysers and the horrible blow-hole that roars continuously, like a wild beast, while a little beyond is the great black cavernous crater of Waimangu, and away in the distance there are more spectral hills, and not a green thing in sight. ”

“ Why is it that men who make a failure of every other calling under the sun invariably take to hotel-keeping? It is a profession that needs the most delicate tact, the widest knowledge of human nature, an almost divine combination of generosity and economy, vast patience, Napoleonic powers of insight and strategy, and above all, incomparable manners. But how many of these qualities, all of which, I assure you, Madam, are indispensable to the making of a fair specimen of the genus host, do the gentlemen aspiring to such positions in New Zealand possess? ”

“ It was the finest sight and the grandest, finer far than the Sutherland Falls, grander even than the Huka. For the great mass of water comes rushing down the first cliff in a foaming torrent, irresistible, and awful in its power, and while an immense white body of seething froth is whirling in the rocky basin another, sea-blue and transparent, in one gigantic curving fountain shoots into the air, and falls, leaving between it and the rocks a wide space that shows a picture of the vegetation on the further cliff. ”

“ The country as far as Timaru was very flat, bounded by the Southern Alps far away on the right and by the sea on the left of the line. Such splendid fields of grain there were, hedged with gorse or hawthorn, mile after mile of them, with plantations of pinus insignis like dark green islands in a sea of verdure, and surrounding some of the houses near the railway were sycamores, limes, poplars, elms, and oaks. And numerous rivers, numberless streams,—no wonder that the isles of New Zealand are emerald with such abundance of water everywhere and such a temperate climate. ”

“ There were the milk, the cream, and the mustard pools, the blue, green, and light-green lakes, the Paddle-pool, the Champagne-pool, which is set fizzing by throwing in a handful of sand, the Primrose Falls, the Sulphur Cave, and so on, quite a big programme for half-a-crown! Most of the springs are hot, but the cold ones are removed from the hot by only a foot or so, and sometimes only by inches. In the hot ones the boiling clay often splashes and spouts out a great deal farther than one expects, as if a live imp had its habitation there and wished to maliciously surprise the intruder. ”

“ After this stimulating constitutional we visited the coloured pools in the witches’ kitchen, and then went on up the cliff again through the scented broom to the Spa Hotel, where we had tea in a carved Maori whare, in the midst of a rose-garden. Then in the cool afternoon came the two-mile walk back to the Terraces, there to dress, dine, persuade Mr. McKinley to tell us some stories of his early life out here before towns were thought about, and finish up the day by a swim in the hot ferruginous spring before turning in. ”

“ Towering cold and white against the blue sky were the great mountains in the distance, behind emerald hills whose trees stood out individually in the clear atmosphere, and close to the water’s edge blazed the rata, flaunting its crimson boldly among the surrounding graces of the tree-ferns and palms. Every moment disclosed new pictures, fresh groupings of foliage and flower, different curves and crevices in the hills, with waterfalls leaping down in their hurry to reach the lake. ”

“ We liked Dunedin better than any of the other cities. It is so beautifully situated, and if an Edinburgh by the sea can be imagined it is this far Southern home of the Scottish pioneers. Its many as yet unspoiled hills are more clustering, smaller, and dressed in a brighter livery than those of Scotland,—the gay green and yellow of virgin grass, gorse, briar and broom, instead of the heathery purple and green that in Scotland is subdued by greyer skies and distance into a soft, indefinable shade. ”

“ In front of the verandahed wooden house embowered in climbing roses were lawns bounded by a winding willow-bordered stream; at the back, orchards, where pears, plums, apples, cherries, oranges, and tangerines flourished in surprising harmony. The place was nearly surrounded with beautiful native bush, with tree-fern and cabbage-palms; flax and toi-grass grew in the creek; the turquoise sea rippled and sparkled in front, and the great white cone of the mountain towered above the undulating pasture-lands and forest stretching away behind. ”

“ The cliffs were massed with many-coloured ferns, creepers, shrubs and mosses, with water everywhere, trickling over red granite, and in cascades and small waterfalls innumerable. Most of the tree-trunks on the river edge were so enveloped in moss as to be several times their natural thickness, with ferns and vines growing on and out of them. On the other side of the river there are forest-clad hills, the trees growing to a great height, mostly pine and birch, with now and then a great rata resplendent in its vivid scarlet. ”

“ A visit to “Paradise” at the far end and head of the lake was to have appropriately occupied Sunday, our second day. But alas, it dawned in rain and storm, an utterly impossible morning for a lake-picnic. The lake rough and grey, the mountains shrouded in mist, we shivered at the sight and sorrowfully resigned all hope of Paradise, for this was our last day.
The much-abused “Trots” are really greatly to be pitied. They arrive in a country on a visit, and are immediately presented with a list of places and tours quite disproportionate to the time at their disposal. ”

“ The town is beautifully clean and well-kept, especially the wharves; the streets are wide, the buildings a credit to the enterprise of the citizens, who have to take possible and probable earthquakes into consideration, and there is a splendid service of electric cars. And the hills behind the houses are deliciously green where they are not aflame with gorse; in the Botanical gardens, the private gardens, and the big rambling cemetery, there are clumps of native bush, tree-fern, and cabbage-palm that makes the terraces above Lambton Quay look quite countrified ”

“ I walked about with Colonel Deane and Captain Greendays, up and down the track, while Mrs Greendays had a hot tub in our hut, prepared for her by the obliging old cook. And later on, when I had had mine and we were both snugly tucked up in our kapok nests, with the firelight dancing on the brown boards and the great logs hissing and crackling a pleasant lullaby, we vowed that we had never been so comfortable and cosy since we landed in New Zealand.
It is not often that one has an opportunity of resting in a silence so profound that it can almost be felt ”

“ Mountains all round us, some heavily wooded, others black, bare, rocky, but all of them so tall that they seemed to touch the sky. Mitre Peak [2] looked from Sutherland’s as if it stood quite apart and separate from its sister-peaks, and Pembroke Peak, with its cloud of snow gleaming white in the sunshine against the blue sky, seemed to be part of the hill that rose close behind the landing stage where Sutherland’s launch looked a tiny boat against the stone platform. ”

“ The next day we spent in a launch on the lake, whose beauties cannot be imagined from the shores. There are said to be forty-two rivers and creeks running into Taupo, but the Waikato is its only outlet, and that runs into the sea about twenty miles to the south of Onehunga.
On Wednesday we drove to Wairakei and explored the geyser valley there. It is more a gorge than a valley, and is simply a succession of boiling pools and geysers on either bank of the river, almost hidden in some places by the wealth of fern and manuka, trees and undergrowth of all kinds. ”

“ The public buildings of Dunedin are collectively finer than those of any other town in New Zealand, particularly the University and Boys’ High School. There are so many beautiful churches that it is difficult to particularise, but “First Church” is at least the most interesting, perhaps, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral the most imposing. Its climate is sharper in winter and not so warm and dry in summer as other parts of the Colony, but to counter-balance this it has the reputation of being the most hospitable, the most intellectual, the most artistic centre of all! ”

“ Warbrick met us there, and took us first to see Maggie Papakura, another guide very well known to all visitors to Rotorua. She has a most captivating voice and manner, and is a great favourite, especially with the Australians, who feted her tremendously when she visited Sydney. She invited us into her whare, or hut, which to our surprise was furnished in European style as a bed-sitting-room, divided by a tall bookcase filled with all the modern works of fiction and travel, and a reed curtain. ”

“ We had heard some of the tourists at Manapouri talking about this road, and one had called it “positively dangerous,” which made us all anxious to see something so novel as a dangerously bad road in New Zealand. But our expectations were doomed to disappointment. It was certainly rather rutty, and there were one or two little stony creeks to cross, but the driver was the most abominably cautious whip I had ever seen, and we travelled as though the coach contained fragile mummies that were being reverently carried to their last resting place. ”

“ However it might have been one of the terrible five, even, perhaps, the chaperone, so I blessed Mrs Sutherland for her choice while I wondered at the strange lack of desire for privacy that makes it possible for inn-keepers in New Zealand to put perfect strangers into one bedroom. It must be the same germ that flourishes in shipbuilders and owners! But surely in these days of marvellous invention so simple a thing as a design that would give each person his own particular corner, however limited the space, might be created! ”

“ It still looked like a battle-field, too, that wonderful valley, even more so, perhaps, under the sunny peaceful sky than when the storm-clouds were darkening and half concealing the gigantic peaks and enormous masses of snow and ice. Now the sun shone down on the battered grey warriors fallen from their lofty eyries, and glistened on the streaming sides of the cruelly-torn and rent declivities, whence great masses of rock and soil had been dislodged in the fury of the elements. ”

“ We had a sort of afternoon-tea-luncheon at one of the coach-stables, provided by the groom’s wife, but as the breakfast at Lurnsden had been far from delectable we were frightfully hungry long before we got to the Accommodation House on the lake.
The ugliness of the drive lasted until we got within measurable distance of the snow-capped mountains that had been part of the horizon all day. ”

“ The wind was blowing the clouds away, the snow had ceased, and every now and then we had glimpses of gigantic peaks and mountain masses, glimpses that were like draughts of water to the thirsty for they assured us that the eternal hills were there behind the concealing clouds, and they spoke of glad to-morrows when the broken promises of the to-days should be fulfilled. ”

“ Saturday night, and all the shops open and gaily lit up as if it had been Christmas Eve at about five o’clock in Regent Street! Every soul in the city must, surely, have been abroad; the streets were packed with people, Cathedral Square looked as if a mass meeting was about to be held, and the electric cars had to travel with great caution, their warning bells going incessantly. There were old people as well as young ones, but simply swarms of children and perambulators, and everyone walked leisurely, not at all as if they were on business bent ”

“ We started quite early this morning in a motor-car, en route for the hot springs at Okoroire, the road running right through the forest we traversed the other day in the train. A mile or two out of Rotorua we stopped to look at the trout in a hill-side spring; there were simply millions of them, big and small, and so tame that they came to the very edge of the pool to look at us! And then we passed the monument erected to the unfortunate Englishman, Bainbridge, who was killed in the Tarawera eruption, the only white person who perished that night, a tourist, and quite young, poor fellow. ”

“ We now had the Maori Pa to visit, where we witnessed a haka danced by Rotorua natives, and when we saw the children diving in real hot mud pools for pennies we felt transported back again to that land of sulphur and steam. The Agricultural Department’s most interesting court occupied us for a long time. They have an apiary in full working order, sheep-shearing by machinery, fruit and vegetable drying machines, incubators with their foster-mothers and broods, &c., &c., a most instructive show for the farmers and also for others than farmers who are at all interested in country life. ”

“ The worst bit of all was the flat on the summit, for the wind was so strong that it was really hard to keep from being blown over, and it howled like fury. Speech had long been impossible; even if we could have made ourselves heard breath was far too precious to waste in talking.
But happily it was soon over; a few hundred yards and we were over the Saddle. Here the snow had melted as it fell, or been thawed immediately by the myriad streams from the peaks, and so much water was pouring down the precipitous downward track that the descent was simply a tortuous waterway. ”