David Paul Gooding

“ At all times waterfalls form one of the chief charms of Manapouri. On rainy days they are so numerous that a score can be seen at one time from more than one point on the lake. Everywhere the precipitous slopes shed water in streams that dash madly through causeways of rimu, rata, and beech; over luxuriant beds of moss that form a continuous growth running far down mountain sides like strips of velvety carpet; and through the face of moss-covered cliffs.
Manapouri's most charming parts are its arms, narrow reaches from three to six miles long. Indeed, Manapouri is little else than arms. ”

“ Beneath the ensign of the Southern Cross and the Union Jack dwells a race of imposing stature, almost the tallest among men. Its members, dark-haired, smiling, and robust, are intelligent, in land collectively wealthy, independent, proud, and jealous of their rights.
Such are the New Zealand Maoris, the venturesome sailors of Hawaiki, the greatest fighting people of the South Pacific. A man-eating, blood-drinking race, they yet had their poets, their orators, their astronomers and wise men. ”

“ Rotorua is a place of early "calls" and early breakfasts; then away, in whirling clouds of dust, in horse and motor coaches, to Whakarewarewa's geysers, to the infernos of Tikitere, to buried Wairoa, to steaming Rotomohana and suffocated Waimangu; or away to sparkling Hamurana or the bosoms of trout-infested lakes. Every morning for a fortnight there is something different to see; then ho! for the geysers of distant Taupo and Wairakei or to restful Te Aroha and its wooded mountain.
Steam heat, boiling mud, and baths are not the only attractions Rotorua offers its visitors. ”

“ At the edge of Te Anau's head starts Milford Track, ending at Milford Sound, about thirty-three miles distant. The first stage is a level stretch half a mile long ending at the Glade House, a State hotel on the left bank of the Clinton. From this point and for miles up the canyon, is one of the most beautiful forest walks in the world. The trees wear bouquets. The path is shaded by beech trees, and many of them are decked with the parasitical mistletoe. Fastening itself on trunk or limb, the plant blossoms into a great bunch of scarlet, forming one of the finest forest effects imaginable. ”

“ The Swiss Alps are a mighty source of revenue; the New Zealand Alps are as yet mainly a source of scenery. No hundred thousand tourists annually jab New Zealand's Alps with alpenstocks, as in the Central Alps of Europe. Here, where the first mountaineers were Maoris, no numerous grim tales of tragedy make one shudder, no hundred bleeding corpses annually stain the snows. Here is a mighty field for exploration, a great white solitude with deep silences still unbroken by footfall of man. ”

“ Lower down there mingled with the tussock the bracken fern, the poisonous tutu, and the thorny Wild Irishman, which is guaranteed to make wild any son of Erin who gets entangled in its spines.
Plowed by glaciers, and scarred by thousands of rivulets born with every rain to scour with the sands of decomposing rock, the mountains have been fashioned into precipices, peaks, crags, "saw teeth," and sharp ridges with many ramifications. On grassy slopes and in all creek beds lie boulders, slabs, and stone splinters and chips; and the steepest parts only the shadows of shifting clouds can scale. ”

“ Switzerland challenged—The Southern Alps—Up a Mighty Glacier—The Perverse Ski—Mountaineering by Moonlight—Within the Shadows of Mount Cook—Boiling the Billy—Over the Alps to Westland. Switzerland, proud as it may well be of its world-lauded mountains, is scarcely prouder of them than is New Zealand of its Southern Alps. For though the world at large has not as yet done so, the Dominion has discovered to its own satisfaction, that its Alps compare worthily with the Alps of Switzerland both in variety and scenic splendor. ”

“ In it trees and undergrowth thrive as in a tropical jungle. Beneath the masses of the small-leaved foliage of the larger trees is a dense growth of young trees struggling to force their way up to the sunlight. Under them all is a fairy carpet of delicate moss and moss ferns. In this grow the curious kidney fern, maidenhair ferns, various kinds of sword ferns, and many other kinds of ferns; for New Zealand has about one hundred and fifty varieties of ferns. Up every gully and canyon are groves and groups of tree ferns, and at intervals the trim fronds of the nikau shoot upward. ”

“ Te Anau, New Zealand's second largest lake, looks like an enormous hammer-headed monster with three crooked legs. These fancied legs are deep, enchanting fiords that thrust themselves far into four high, rugged mountain ranges. On the east the coast is comparatively regular, and for about twenty miles is uninteresting. On this monotonous stretch of fern-matted benches all excursions on the lake begin, and here halt for a night all travelers to Milford Sound via Milford Track, which begins at the lake's head. ”

“ Here the lanterns were extinguished, leaving us in the flickerings of one candle. After a few rods of stumbling, we halted. Something dimly white was ahead, and it was moving. What was it? An uncanny inhabitant of these dripping silences? No—a boat, and tens of thousands of glowworms! We were on the banks of an underground stream, a stream as dark as the river of death; and here were a boat and a boatman as ghostly in appearance as flitting forms of a spirit world. ”

“ The Government Reserve at Whaka is one of the most active and absorbing spots of the thermal zone. On geyser-built sinter terraces I counted eight geysers and a boiling caldron. Near them were deep, silent pools of clear, scalding blue; deep and shallow pools of hot, soapy-looking water; basins of boiling mud, blue, gray, creamy, black; "porridge-pots" and "paint-pots"; hot springs that simmered and boiled; steaming earth-banks, siliceous walls and rubbish heaps. Excepting the geysers, all was hidden by the low manuka and the lower fern. ”

“ It has steaming lakes, pools, and streams, healing baths and springs, acidulous basins of emerald, opal, and orange, and tinted terraces of sinter. From smoking crater come deadly gases, and on mountain-top is heated turmoil amidst snow and ice.
Here are thermal islands in the sea, and buried villages ashore. Here, in this warming-pan, this outdoor kitchen, are roaring steam vents, simmering shallows and sweating sulphur. In populous centres, in untenanted swamp and manuka waste are plutonic vapors, infuriate mud, and spouting water. ”

“ New Zealand has long been singled out as a striking example of the Utopian tendencies of this age. Its initiativeness, its independence and progressiveness have marked it conspicuously, and the world echoes and reechoes with its well-earned encomiums. Although New Zealand has abundant opportunity to become more democratic still, it has set an example for legislation in favor of the people that might well be imitated by earth's greatest nations. ”

“ When one tide is high the other has receded, yet at high tide they are only a thousand yards apart.
Auckland has been called a city of parks. It is more. As seen from Mount Eden it seemed a park itself,—a rolling park with meadows, fertile hills, trees and hedges, bowling-greens, football and cricket grounds, race-courses, and harmonious intervals of water. ”

“ In a region of desolate grandeur, where age is deeply written on lofty mountains of mica schist that show the grinding, planing power of glaciers, lies New Zealand's Lucerne, Wakatipu, its longest and third largest lake. About fifty miles long and averaging little more than two miles in width, it looks like an enormous crank handle. For twenty miles it runs north, then turning west for twelve miles, it runs north again for another score of miles. ”

“ Skis are alike the world over, and their idiosyncrasies are as marked in New Zealand as elsewhere. They have notions of their own about navigation, and very perverse notions they are, too. For carefully laid courses they have naught but contempt; under the feet of the unskilled they are intractable. They start willingly enough, perhaps, but only with malevolent intentions. On them one scarcely launches one's self before trickery begins.
Skis are in accord in only one respect—their determination to throw the skier. ”

“ The hills were clothed with a denser, more luxurious growth of ornate bush and flowering tree. Most brilliant of all was the crimson rata, greatest of New Zealand's forest parasites. Thousands of tall tree ferns bent over lofty cliffs, and ran in straggling rows up steep slopes or spread into thick groves. At infrequent intervals a nikau palm thrust up its latticed fronds in shaded nooks. Everywhere the kiekie clambered and the long pointed leaves of the astelia rustled, weighting the trunks of tree and fern and clinging to perpendicular walls. ”

“ Lakes and Sounds of the Lone Southwest—The Rabbit Curse—Enchanting Manapouri and Te Anau—The Finest Walk in the World—Milford Sound—New Zealand's Lucerne.
In the southwestern part of the South Island, over the tussocky hills and plains of Otago and Southland, is New Zealand's grandest lake region; its magnificent sounds that rival the fiords of Norway; river canyons with cloud-swept rims; and sea-cliffs rising thousands of feet above the tides. ”

“ In North Auckland the cricket thrives wonderfully, both on the hearth, or as near as he can get to it, and on the road. Everywhere his cheerful temperament expresses itself in song, now in jubilant solo, again in one grand chorus. ”

“ After two noses have found a proper setting, perhaps with some skirmishing for position, there is little or no rubbing. Some noses are so expert in their manœuvres that they instantly find a satisfactory resting-place; others, not so experienced, or having only a slight acquaintance with a friendly nose, feel their way or proceed cautiously, like an Indian tracker on a stealthy mission.
Fortunately for the Maori, with few exceptions his nose is flat. Thus it is admirably adapted for hongis, and its owner regards it as the most beautiful nose in the world. All hail, then, to the Maori nose! ”

“ Yet time is bringing a change. The stillness is now more often broken, the human tread more frequently is heard. To this argent world, where the eye glimpses sea, lake, and river, richly wooded height, and grassy plain, from one vantage-ground, pleasure-seekers yearly repair in increasing numbers to climb, ramble, glissade, and ski.
New Zealand's Alps are more than three hundred miles long, but their name applies more particularly to their highest portion, in the west central part of the South Island. ”

“ Then it was the mournful tangi was held; then men and women came from far and near to condole with the sorrowing, to cry loudly, to feast even while their hearts were heavy and their eyes red with the deluge of many tears. Then were heard wild songs, then were seen frenzied dances, then flowed the blood of lamenting ones, usually women, who in their mad grief slashed their bodies and sometimes their faces. Sacrifices of slaves were occasionally made, that the bewailed might have attendant spirits. Sometimes even suicide was committed, as when the wives of a chief strangled themselves ”

“ In winter, as far as the eye can discern there is one undulating field of snow darkened only by jutting peaks; in summer, snow is seen only on the highest ridges. As a whole the panorama is a bewildering succession of broken mountains from five thousand to seven thousand feet high; terraced hills with long, dark expanses; deep gorges; lakes; and streams carrying golden sands.
The most majestic and beautiful scenery of Lake Wakatipu is at its head, thirty miles from Queenstown. ”

“ Rounding Cautley's hidden guns, the steamer plowed the Waitemata, "the waters of affliction." On the mainland to the left were long, indented walls of sandstone, green, rolling meadows, groves and hedges of trees, scattered homes, and beach resorts; on shrub-mantled cliffs to the right, the pretty suburbs of Devonport, Stanley Bay, Birkenhead, Northcote, and Chelsea, where the Colonial Sugar Refining Company extracts sugar from Fijian cane.
Straight ahead, climbing hills and filling valleys, was Greater Auckland, one hundred thousand strong. ”

“ Discounting exaggerated conceptions, no person, no institution in New Zealand is so busy, so versatile as that vague yet substantial entity, "The Government." Its hands are in many enterprises and benevolences, and for years it has been constantly on the lookout for new ways to occupy itself.
To-day it does business with one hand and distributes philanthropy with the other. As a direct commercial institution it operates railways, telegraph and telephone systems, coal mines, tourist steamers and motor coaches, and soon it will be selling electricity. ”

“ It is doubtful if anywhere else in the world there are canoe races superior to those held on the Waikato River, at Mercer and at Ngaruawahia. The canoe contests of Washington and British Columbia are usually exciting enough for anybody, but the crews are limited to about a dozen men. In the long Maori war canoes from thirty to forty men flash paddles as they are urged forward by the rhythmic cries of their captains. In the Society Islands, canoes and crews are about equally large, but I would hesitate to back the Tahitians or Mooreans in a contest with the hardier Maoris. ”