William Pember Reeves

“ The columnar dignity of the great trees contrasts with the press and struggle of the undergrowth, with the airy lace-work of fern fronds, and the shafted grace of the stiffer palm-trees. From the moss and wandering lycopodium underfoot, to the victorious climber flowering eighty feet overhead, all is life, varied endlessly and put forth without stint. Of course there is death at work around you, too; but who notes the dying amid such a riot of energy? The earth itself smells moist and fresh. What seems an odour blended of resin, sappy wood, damp leaves, and brown tinder, hangs in the air. ”

“ Between one inlet and another the sea beats on sheer faces of cruel granite. Instantaneous is the change when the gates are entered, and the voyager finds his vessel floating on a surface narrower than a lake and more peaceful than a river. The very throbbing of a steamer’s engines becomes gentler and reaches the ears softly like heart-beats. The arms of the mountains seem stretched to shut out tumult and distraction. Milford, for instance, is a dark-green riband of salt water compressed between cliffs less than a mile apart, and in one pass narrowing to a width of five hundred yards. ”

“ Strips of grass are burned off in advance, and dead timber blown up with dynamite. Buckets of water are passed from hand to hand, or the flames are beaten out with sacks or blankets. Seen at night on a burning hill-side, the row of masculine fighting figures stands out jet-black against the red glow, and the wild attitudes and desperate exertions are a study for an artist. Among the men, boys work gleefully; there is no school for them when a fire has to be beaten. Very young children suffer greatly from the smoke with which the air they breathe is laden, perhaps for days together. ”

“ One of the curiosities of the Taupo wilderness is the flat-topped mountain Horo-Horo. Steep, wooded slopes lead up to an unbroken ring of precipices encircling an almost level table-top. To the eyes of riders or coach-passengers on the road between Taupo and Roto-rua, the brows of the cliffs seem as inaccessible as the crown of Roraima in British Guiana in the days before Mr. Im Thurn scaled it. The Maori own Horo-Horo, and have villages and cultivations on the lower slopes where there is soil fertile beyond what is common thereabout. ”

“ Round about the homestead you will still see the traditional features of colonial station life, the long wool-shed with high-pitched roof of shingles or corrugated iron, and the sheep-yards which, to the eye of the new chum, seem such an unmeaning labyrinth. Not far off will stand the men’s huts, a little larger than of yore, and more likely nowadays to be frame cottages than to be slab whares with the sleeping-bunks and low, wide chimneys of days gone by. ”

“ Sworn enemies are they of tall bracken and stately pines. To their eyes nothing can equal in beauty a landscape of black, fire-scorched stumps and charred logs—if only on the soil between these they may behold the green shoots of young grass thrusting ten million blades upward. What matter the ugliness and wreckage of the first stages of settlement, if, after many years, a tidy farm and smiling homestead are to be the outcome? In the meantime, while under-scrubbing and bush-felling are going on, the axemen build for themselves a slab hut with shingled roof. ”

“ Then, though the foliage is none too dense, each leaf is of a fair size. From their lofty roof above your head to the subsoil below your feet, all is odorous of resin. Leaves and twigs smell of it; it forms lumps in the forks, oozes from the trunk and mixes with the earth—the swelling humus composed of flakes of decayed bark dropped through the slow centuries. There are still kauri pines in plenty that must have been vigorous saplings when William the Norman was afforesting south-western Hampshire. The giants just spoken of are survivors from ages far more remote. ”

“ This may seem an irreverent simile for the great crater lake, with its deep waters and frowning cliffs, held so sacred and mysterious by the Maori of old. Seldom is its surface flecked by any sail, and only one island of any size breaks the wide expanse. The glory of Taupo—apart from the noble view of the volcanoes southward of it—is a long rampart of cliffs that almost without a break hems in its western side mile after mile. At their highest they reach 1100 feet. So steep are they that in flood-time cascades will make a clean leap from their summits into the lake ”

“ At its worst, however, the eastern region may claim to be serviceable to the lover of scenery as well as to the sheep-farmer. Its thinly-grassed slopes, bare rocks, and fan-shaped shingle-slips furnish, at any rate, a foil to the grandeur of the central range and the luxuriance of the west. It is, indeed, not easy to believe that such glaciers and passes, such lakes and sea-gulfs, lie beyond the stern barrier, and the enjoyment, when wonderland is penetrated, is all the greater. ”

“ It is a far cry from the trepang and tropic birds (the salmon-pink bo’suns) of the northern rocks to the sea-lions that yawn at the casual visitor to Disappointment Island. The Kermadecs—to employ an overworked expression—bask in the smiles of perpetual summer. The Three Kings, lying thirty-eight miles beyond the tip of the North Island, might be Portuguese isles, and the Chathams—as far as climate goes—bits of France. But the peaty groups of the shivering South lie right across the pathway of the Antarctic gales. ”

“ Very beautiful are the larger geysers, as, after their first roaring outburst and ascent, they stand, apparently climbing up, their effort to overcome the force of gravity seeming to grow greater and greater as they climb. Every part of the huge column seems to be alive; and, indeed, all is in motion within it. Innumerable little fountains gush up on its sides, to curl back and fall earthwards. The sunlight penetrates the mass of water, foam, and steam, catching the crystal drops and painting rainbows which quiver and dance in the wind. ”

“ On the other hand, trustworthy guides may be engaged, and colonial hospitality may vary the rigours of camp life. Then, too, may be counted the delights of a mountain life, the scenery of which excels Scotland, while the freshness of the upland air is brilliant and exhilarating in a fashion that Britons can scarcely imagine. And to counterbalance loneliness, the hunter has the sensation of undisturbed independence and freedom from the trammels of convention, as he looks round him in a true wilderness which the hand of man has not yet gashed or fouled. ”

“ Milford is barely nine miles long—but how many scenes are met with in those nine! No sooner does the sense of confinement between dark and terrific heights become oppressive than some high prospect opens out to the upward gaze, and the sunshine lightens up the wooded shoulders and glittering snow-fields of some distant mount. Then the whole realm is so utterly wild, so unspoiled and unprofaned. Man has done nothing to injure or wreck it. Nowhere have you to avert your eyes to avoid seeing blackened tracts, the work of axe and fire. ”

“ The centre of the mountain-lily’s cup is shining gold. And when speaking of colour we may fairly take count of the golden glint or pinkish tinge of the toé-toé plumes, the lilac hue of the palm-flower, the orange-coloured fruit of the karaka, and the purples of the tutu and wineberry. Nor do flowers lack beauty because they are white,—witness the ribbon-wood loaded with masses of blooms, fine as those of the double cherry, and honey-scented to boot ”

“ Vegetables flourish; goats, pigs, and cattle thrive. So far are the valleys and hill-sides from being barren that their plant-life is a joy to the New Zealand botanists, who pray for nothing so much as that settlement may hold its hand and not molest this floral paradise. Pleurophyllums, celmisias, gentians, veronicas, grass-trees, spread beside the sea-gulfs as though in sub-alpine meadows. The leaves are luxuriant, the flowers richer in colour than on our main islands. The jungle of crouching rata tinges the winding shores with its summer scarlet. ”

“ To the ordinary stranger from Europe, the most interesting of our industries are those that bear least [13] likeness to the manufactures and agriculture of an old country. To him there is a savour of the strange and new in kauri-gum digging, gold-mining, timber-cutting, and saw-milling, and even the conversion of bushes of flax into bales of hemp. But if I were asked to choose two industries before others to describe with some minuteness, I think I should select the growing, freezing, and export of meat, and the application of the factory system to the making and export of butter and cheese. ”

“ In reality the quiet-looking islet seethes with fiery life. Seen at close quarters it is found to be a shell, which from one side looks comically like the well-worn stump of a hollow tooth. It is a barren crater near a thousand feet high, enclosing what was a lake and is now shrunk to a warm green pool, ringed with bright yellow sulphur. Hot springs boil and roar on the crater-lake’s surface, ever sending up columns of hissing and roaring steam many hundred feet into the air. ”

“ Nothing can be finer than the spectacle, just as nothing [106] can be more dreary than the resulting ruin. A piece of bush accidentally burned has no touch of dignity in its wreck. It becomes merely an ugly and hateful jumble, begrimed, untidy, and unserviceable. A tract that has been cut down and fired deliberately is in a better case. Something more like a clean sweep has been made, and the young grass sprouting up gives promise of a better day. But bush through which fire has run too quickly is often spoiled as forest, without becoming of use to the farmer. ”

“ Perhaps the Crown has leased a block of virgin forest to him; perhaps he is one of the tenants of a Maori tribe, holding on a twenty-one or forty-two years’ lease; perhaps he has contrived to pick up a freehold in the rough. At any rate he and his mate are on the ground armed with saw and axe for their long attack upon Nature; and as you note the muscles of their bared arms, and the swell of the chests expanding under their light singlets, you are quite ready to believe that Nature will come out of the contest in a damaged condition. ”

“ One of the commonest is a lily like a palm-tree, and another equally abundant is a lily like a tall flax. A third is a tree-dweller, a luxuriant mass of drooping blades, resembling sword-grass. A fourth is a black-stemmed wild vine, a coiling and twining parasite of the forest, familiarly named supplejack, which resembles nothing so much as a family of black snakes climbing about playfully in the foliage. Another, even more troublesome creeper, is no lily but a handsome bramble, known as the bush-lawyer, equipped with ingenious hooks of a most dilatory kind. ”

“ From the south-west, Aorangi, with the ridge attached to it, resembles the high-pitched roof of a Gothic church with a broad, massive spire standing up from the northern end. When, under strong sunlight, the ice glitters on the steep crags, and the snow-fields, unearthly in their purity, contrast with the green tint of the crawling glaciers, the great mountain is a spectacle worthy of its fame. ”

“ There is no need to measure heights, calculate bulk, or compare one sight with another in a territory where beauty and grandeur are spent so freely. The glory of the Sounds is not found in this cliff or that waterfall, in the elevation of any one range or the especial grace of any curve or channel. It comes from the astonishing succession, yet variety, of grand yet beautiful prospects, of charm near at hand contrasted with the sternness of the rocky and snowy wilderness which forms the aerial boundary of the background. ”

“ For utility no wood in the islands, perhaps, surpasses that of the puriri, the teak of the country. One is tempted to say that it should be made a penal offence to burn a tree at once so serviceable and so difficult to replace. A tall puriri, too, with its fresh-green leaves and rose-tinted flowers, is a cheering sight, especially when you see, as you sometimes do, healthy specimens which have somehow managed to survive the cutting down and burning of the other forest trees, and stand in fields from which the bush has been cleared away. ”

“ The twisted or wrinkled horns of an old he-goat are not despicable weapons. As the reward of many hours’ hard clambering, varied by wading through ice-cold torrents, and spiced, it may be, with some danger, the goat hunter may secure a long pair of curving horns, or in mid-winter a thick, warm pelt, sometimes, though rarely, pure white. Moreover, he may feel that he is ridding the mountain pastures of an unlicensed competitor of that sacred quadruped, the sheep. Goats are by no means welcome on sheep-runs. ”

“ So after nightfall back he came to the spot, and after a while the shore was covered with fairies. Canoes were paddled to land dragging nets full of mackerel, and all were busy in securing the fish. Kahukura mingled with the throng, and was as busy as any, picking up fish and running a string of flax through their gills. Like many Maori chiefs, he was a light-complexioned man, so fair that in the starlight the fairies took him for one of themselves. ”

“ These last often attract the eye by their high faces, bold curves, and curious, almost smooth, regularity. For the rest, the more eastern of the mountains usually become barer and duller as the watershed is left farther behind. Oases of charm they have, where the flora of some sheltered ravine or well-hidden lake detains the botanist; but, as a rule, their brilliant sunshine and exhilarating air, their massive forms and wild intersecting rivers, have much to do to save them from being summed up as stony, arid, bleak, and tiresome. ”

“ Many and many a grey perished stick has been found in the interior of the triumphant destroyer. In one tree only does the constrictor meet more than its match. In the puriri it finds a growth harder and stouter than itself. Iron is met by steel. The grey smooth trunk goes on expanding, indifferent to the rata’s grasp, and even forcing its gripping roots apart; and the pleasant green of the puriri’s leaves shows freshly among the darker foliage of the strangler. ”

“ Every rule of human forestry and gardening appears to be broken, and the result is an easy triumph for what seems waste and rank carelessness. Trees tottering with age still dispute the soil with superabundant saplings, or, falling, lean upon and are held up by undecaying neighbours. Dead trunks cumber the ground, while mosses, ferns, and bushes half conceal them. Creepers cover matted thickets, veiling their flanks and netting them into masses upon which a man may sit, and a boy be irresistibly tempted to walk. Aloft, one tree may grow upon another, and itself bear the burden of a third. ”

“ There is nothing extraordinary in the way of beauty there. Still, it is high and shapely, with enough foliage to feather the rocks and soften the outlines. Botanists know it as one of the few spots away from the sea-beach where the crimson-flowering pohutu-kawa has deigned to grow. In any case, the scene of the legend of Hinemoa is sure of a warm corner in all New Zealand hearts. The story of the chief’s daughter, and her swim by night across the lake to join her lover on the island, has about it that quality of grace with which most Maori tales are but scantily draped. ”

“ As the rains descend and the floods come, their men hurry away to loosen barriers, start logs on their way, or steer them in their course. Wild is the rush of the timber as it is thus swept away, not in long orderly rafts such as one sees zigzagging along on the Elbe or St. Lawrence, but in a frantic mob of racing logs, spinning round, rolled over and over, colliding, plunging and reappearing in the swirling water. Rafts you may see in the ordinary way being towed down the Wairoa River to the Kaipara harbour by steam tugs. ”

“ But to me the magic of the forest—I speak of it where you find it still unspoiled—comes first from its prodigal life and continual variety. Why, asks a naturalist, do so many of us wax enthusiastic over parasites and sentimental over lianas? Because, I suppose, these are among the most striking signs of the astonishing vitality and profusion which clothe almost every yard of ground and foot of bark, and, gaining foothold on the trees, invade the air itself. Nature there is not trimmed and supervised, weeded out, swept and garnished, as in European woods. ”

“ Sport in the islands resembles their climate and scenery. To name the distinguishing feature I have once more to employ the well-worn word, variety. Even if we limit the term to the pursuit of game, there is enough of that to enable an idle man to pass his time all the year round. In the autumn there is deer-shooting of the best, and in the early winter the sportsman may turn to wild ducks and swamp-hen. Then wild goats have begun to infest certain high ranges, especially the backbone of the province of Wellington and the mountains in central Otago. ”

“ Nor, charming and spacious as the gulf is, need the Auckland yachtsmen limit themselves to it. Unless entirely wedded to smooth water, they can run northward past the Little Barrier Island and visit that fine succession of beautiful inlets, Whangarei, the Bay of Islands, and Whangaroa. All lie within easy reach, and all are so extensive and so picturesquely diversified with cliffs, spurs, bays, and islets, that any yachtsman able to navigate a cutter with reasonable skill should ask for nothing better than a summer cruise to and about them. ”

“ The rata lucida does not climb other trees. Another and even brighter species, the florid rata, is a climbing plant, and so are two white-flowered kinds named albiflora and scandens, both beautiful in their way, but lacking the distinction of the blood-hued species, for white is only too common a colour in our forest flora. The florid rata, on the other hand, is perhaps the most brilliant of the tribe. Winding its way up to the light, it climbs to the green roof of the forest, and there flaunts a bold scarlet like the crest of some gay bird of the Tropics. ”