Lady Barker

“ But the days are so short now that we cannot spare ourselves half the time we want either to eat or rest, or to linger and listen to the great monotonous roar of falling water, so agitating at first, so soothing after a little while. The boys have bolted their dinner, plunged their heads and hands under a tiny tricklet close by, and are off to the shallows beneath the bridge, where the river runs wide and low, where geese are cackling on the boulders, fish leaping in the pools, and Kafir lads laughing and splashing on the brink. ”

“ The rain was indeed over next morning, and a flood of brilliant sunshine awoke me "bright and early," as the country people say. It seemed impossible to stop in bed, so I jumped up, thrust my feet into slippers, and my arms into a warm dressing-gown, and sallied forth, opening window after window, so as to let the sunshine into rooms which not even a week's steady down-pour could render damp. What a morning it was, and for mid-winter too! No haze, or fog, or vapour on all the green hills, whose well-washed sides were glistening in a bright glow of sunlight. ”

“ All this time the storm drew rapidly nearer, the wind blew in icy cold gusts, the hail came down in large stones, pelting our faces till they tingled again; it was nearly an hour before we rode up to the hospitable, ever-open porch door of Rockwood. I was immediately lifted off my saddle by kind and strong arms, and carried with frozen limbs and streaming habit into the kitchen, for I was as unfit for the drawing-room as my own water-spaniel. ”

“ Sometimes we have a hot, scorching gale all day, drying and parching one’s very skin up, and shriveling one’s lovely roses like the blast from a furnace: then in the afternoon a dark cloud sails suddenly up from behind the hills to the west. It is over the house before one knows it is coming: a loud clap of thunder shakes the very ground beneath one’s feet, others follow rapidly, and a thunderstorm bewilders one for some ten minutes or so. A few drops of cold rain fall to the sound of the distant thunder, now rolling away eastward, which yet “struggles and howls at fits.” ”

“ Giant Alps clothed half up their steep sides with evergreen pines,—whose dark forms end abruptly where snow and ice begin,—stand out against a pure sky of more than Italian blue, and only when a cleared saddle is reached can the traveller look down over the wooded hills and vallies rolling away inland before him, or turn his eyes sea-ward to the bold coast with its many rivers, whose wide mouths foam right out to where the great Pacific waves are heaving under the bright winter sun. ”

“ I found myself saying constantly, in a sort of ecstasy, "How I wish they could see this in England!" and not only see but feel it, for the very breath one draws on such a morning is a happiness; the air is so light and yet balmy, it seems to heal the lungs as you inhale it. The verandah is covered with honeysuckles and other creepers, and the gable end of the house where the bow-window of the drawing-room projects, is one mass of yellow Banksia roses in full blossom. ”

“ Every moment added to the desolate grandeur of the scene. Bleak hills rose up on either hand, with still bleaker and higher peaks appearing beyond them again. An awful silence, unbroken by the familiar cheerful sound of the sheep calling to each other,—for even the hardy merino cannot live in these ranges during the winter months,—brooded around us, and the dark mass of a splendid "bush," extending over many hundred acres, only added to the lonely grandeur of the scene. ”

“ Straightway the glare of the long sunny day, the rattle and jolting of the post-cart, the toil through the sand, all slip away from mind and memory, and the tranquil delicious present, “with its odors of rest and of love,” slips in to soothe and calm our jaded senses. Certainly, it is hotter here than in Maritzburg—that assertion we are prepared to die in defence of—but we acknowledge that the heat at this hour is not oppressive, and the tropical luxuriance of leaf and flower all around is worth a few extra degrees of temperature. ”

“ Inside the house everything is comfortable and pretty, and, above all things, looks thoroughly home-like. Out of the verandah you pass through a little hall hung with whips and sticks, spurs and hats, and with a bookcase full of novels at one end of it, into a dining-room, large enough for us, with more books in every available corner, the prints you know so well on the walls, and a trophy of Indian swords and hunting-spears over the fireplace: this leads into the drawing-room, a bright, cheery little room—more books and pictures, and a writing-table in the "horiel." ”

“ Poor woman, she was most anxious to get away; and the lovely sylvan scene, with the tall trees standing like sentinels over their prostrate brethren, the wealth of beauteous greenery, springing through fronds of fern and ground creepers, the bright-winged flight of paroquets and other bush birds, even the vast expanse of the lake which stretched almost from their threshold for so many miles, all would have been gladly exchanged for a dusty high street in any country town-ship. ”

“ For this the whole camp turns out of their own accord. The cooks leave their fires, the fatigue-party their scrubbing and the lazy ones their pipes. Under the clear starlight, with the Southern Cross sloping up from the edge of yonder dusky hill, with the keen wind sweeping round the camp of this little handful of Englishmen in a strange and distant country, the words of the most beautiful tune in the world come ringing as though straight from each man’s heart. Of course we all come out of our tent to stand bareheaded too, and I assure you it is a very impressive and beautiful moment. ”

“ Some explorers in bygone days must have camped here, for half-a-dozen trees were felled, and the thick brush-wood had been burnt for a few yards, just enough to let us take in the magnificent view before and around us. Below roared and foamed, among great boulders washed down from the cliff, the Waimakiriri; in the middle of it lay a long narrow strip of white shingle, covered with water in the winter floods, but now shining like snow in the bright sunlight. ”

“ Thus the delicious afternoon wore on, until it was time to boil the kettle once more, and make a cup of tea before setting out homewards. The lengthening shadows added fresh tenderness and beauty to the peaceful scene, and the sky began to paint itself in its exquisite sunset hues. It has been usual to praise the tints of tropic skies when the day is declining; but never, in any of my wanderings to East and West Indies, have I seen such gorgeous evening colours as those which glorify New Zealand skies. ”

“ Every evening we have a wood-fire on the open hearth in the drawing-room, and there have been sharp frosts lately. The waving tips of the poor bamboos look sadly yellow, but I have two fine flourishing young camellias out of doors without shelter of any kind, and my supply of roses has never failed from those trees which get regularly watered. The foliage, too, of the geraniums is as luxuriant as ever, though each leaf is white with dust, but the first shower will make them lovely once more. ”

“ Already a short wake eddies, And a furrow is cleft and curled To the right and left. Float out from the harbour and highland That hides all the region I know, Let me look a last time on the island Well seen from the sea to the snow. The lines of the ranges I follow, I travel the hills with my eyes, For I know where they make a deep hollow, A valley of grass and the rise Of streams clearer than glass. ”

“ The cold weather has left its bright roses on the children’s cheeks, and the winter rains exceptionally having this year made every blade of grass and leaf of tree to laugh and sing in freshest green. After the dry, windy summer I am assured there is hardly a leaf and never a blade of grass to be seen in Cape Town, and only a little straggling verdure under the shelter of the mountain. The great want of this place is water. No river, scarcely a brook, refreshes one’s eye for many and many a league inward. ”

“ I sat on the short sweet grass, which springs upon the rich loam of fallen leaves the moment sunlight is admitted into the heart of a bush. No one plants it; probably the birds carry the seeds; yet it grows freely after a clearing has been made. Nature lays down a green sward directly on the rich virgin mould, and sets to work besides to cover up the unsightly stems and holes of the fallen timber with luxuriant tufts of a species of hart's-tongue fern, which grows almost as freely as an orchid on decayed timber. ”

“ It was only a rough building, made of slabs of wood with cob between; but there was a bit of fence and the corner of a garden and an English grass paddock, which looked about as big as a pocket-handkerchief from where we stood. A horse or two and a couple of cows were tethered near, and we could hear the bark of a dog. A more complete hermitage could not have been desired by Diogenes himself, and for the first time we felt ashamed of invading the recluse in such a formidable body, but ungrudging, open-handed hospitality is so universal in New Zealand that we took courage and began our descent. ”

“ Instead of the soft, balmy twilight on which we had counted, the sky was of an inky blackness, but for all that we had light enough and to spare. I never saw such lightning. The flashes came literally every second, and lit up the whole heavens and earth with a blinding glare far brighter than any sunshine. So great was the contrast, and so much more intense the darkness after each flash of dazzling light, that we could only venture to walk on during the flashes, though one’s instinct was rather to stand still, awestricken and mute. ”

“ The short twilight hour was over, and the stars were filtering their soft radiance on our heads by the time we heard the welcoming barks of the homestead, and saw the glimmer of the lighted lamp in our sitting-room, shining out of the distant gloom. And so ended, in supper and a night of deep dreamless sleep, one of the many happy picnic days of my New Zealand life. ”

“ The day after a good burn thousands of sea-gulls flock to the black ground. Where they spring from I cannot tell, as I never see one at any other time, and their hoarse, incessant cry is the first sign you have of their arrival. They hover over the ground, every moment darting down, for some insect. They cannot find much else but roasted lizards and, grasshoppers, for I have never seen a caterpillar in New Zealand. ”

“ It seems little short of a miracle when one sees the baked earth, hard as a granite cliff, dry as a last year’s bone, and through its parched, pulverized surface little clumps of trefoil are springing everywhere, and young blades of grass. On the mulberry trees, too, the buttons have burst into tufts of dainty leaves, which assert themselves more and more every day, and herald that wealth of freshest greenery in which Natal was clad over hill and dale when first I saw her last November. ”

“ For the first time since we started we could perceive the grandeur of the surrounding country; but grand scenery is not necessary nor indeed desirable in a sheep run. Splendid mountains ran down in steep spurs to the very shore of the enormous lake. Behind them, piled in snowy steeps, rose the distant Alps of the Antipodes; great masses of native bush made dark purple shadows among the clefts of the hills, whilst the lake rippled in and out of many a graceful bay and quiet harbour. Not a fleck or film of cloud floated between us and the serene and darkening sky ”

“ In summer the effect must really be charming with the double bordering of acacia trees fresh and green instead of leafless and dusty; the queer little Dutch church, with its hugely disproportionate weathercock shining large and bright in the streaming sunlight; the teams of patient bullocks moving slowly off again through the dust with wagons of forage or firewood to be dragged to their various destinations; and the fast-melting, heterogeneous crowd of Kafirs and coolies, Dutch and English—some with baskets, some with dangling poultry or carefully-carried tins of eggs, but none with turkeys. ”

“ Centuries ago there must have been a great landslip here, for the side of the mountain is quite hollowed out, and Nature has gradually covered the ugly brown rent with the thickest tapestry of her most delicate handiwork. I noticed two varieties of the maiden-hair, its slender black stem making the most exquisite tracery among the vivid greens. There was no tint of colour except green when once we passed the red-fringed curtain of rata-branches, only the white and shining fairy beach and the gleaming threads of water. ”

“ It is quite as necessary to be a good shot, for a grey pig standing under the lee of a boulder of exactly his own colour is a much more difficult object to hit from the opposite side of a ravine than a stag; and a wild boar is every whit as keen of scent and sharp of eye and ear as any antlered "Monarch of the Glen."
Imagine then a beautiful winter's morning without wind or rain. There has been perhaps a sharp frost over-night, but after a couple of hours of sunshine the air is as warm and bright as midsummer. We used to be glad enough of a wood fire at breakfast ”