West Coast of New Zealand

“ New Zealand is by no means a flat country, though there are in it some fair-sized plains, one of which—that of Canterbury—is about as flat a stretch of one hundred miles as is to be found in the world. On the whole, however, both North and South Islands are lands of the mountain and the flood, and not only in this, but in the contour of some of their peaks and coast-line, show more than a fanciful resemblance to the west of Scotland. But the New Zealand mountains are far loftier than anything in the British Islands. ”

“ With this view I embarked in one of the small schooners which are constantly trading between Sydney and the Bay of Islands; made the north-west cape of New Zealand on the 4th of February, 1839, and the next day arrived in the bay. The whole coast appeared very barren, having no other vegetation than bushes and fern; it is much broken, and of a dark-coloured volcanic rock; in some places the earth on the surface is of a bright yellow or red, and apparently of an ochreous nature. ”

“ Improved steamboat communication, and increased facilities for inland travel, now offer inducements, which tourists are beginning to understand and appreciate. Every succeeding summer witnesses an increase of visitors, who go away, at once delighted and amazed, to spread in widening circles their tales of this wonderland. It would be no extravagant prediction to assert that in a few years hence the West Coast will become a recognised stage in the grand tour, which to miss will be to mar all pleasurable recollections. ”

“ In his work, entitled ‘Greater Britain’ (Part 11, chap. ii.) , Sir Charles Dilke has truly observed ‘that the peculiarity which makes the New Zealand West Coast scenery the most beautiful in the world is that here alone, you can find semi-tropical vegetation growing close up to the eternal snows. The latitudes, and the great moisture of the climate, bring the glaciers very low into the valleys; and cause the growth of palm-like ferns on the ice river’s very edge. ”

“ I have learned from several quarters that the published reports of my visits to all parts of New Zealand have awakened much interest in the mother country. Time will not permit me, on the present occasion, to discuss the future prospects of a settlement on the sounds of the West Coast, of which I have attempted a general description. It has been proposed to place some Norwegian emigrants on one or more of these fiords, but any scheme of this nature would require careful consideration. There are now no inhabitants whatsoever, either of Europeans or Maoris ”

“ IR GEORGE GREY, K.C.B., was the first Governor of New Zealand who paid the West Coast a visit. On Thursday, the 24th of January 1867, His Excellency reached Hokitika, having made the journey overland from Christchurch on that and the previous day. These being the palmiest times of the coast, you may be sure the Governor, who was very popular, received a most hearty welcome at all the places he visited. ”

“ The height and regularity of the mountain backbone increase the diversity. Only one pass, the Haast (1716 ft.) , crosses from E. to W. at a less height than 3000 ft. Along the whole west coast the climate resembles nothing in the British Islands so much as Cork and Kerry, for there are the same wet gales from a western ocean, the same clouds gathering on the dripping sides of wild mountains, an equal absence of severe frosts and hot sunshine, and a rich and evergreen vegetation. Elsewhere, sheltered Nelson has a more genial air than the Wellington side of Cook Strait. ”

“ Yet its fateful significance, both for New Zealand and for the individual travellers, could hardly be even guessed at the time by the two men themselves. To the one it was to bring life; to the other, troubles almost worse than death.
After ten days' voyage down the eastern coast, the schooner which conveyed Henry Williams, Hadfield, and their Maori retinue rounded Cape Palliser; but, meeting there the full force of the west wind through the straits, was unable to make direct for Kapiti, and [75] took shelter in a harbour which opened out on their starboard bow. ”

“ It was only an exploring expedition—an expedition for the exploration of probably the most interesting and romantic portion of the whole Colony of New Zealand—and by no means the least considerable, though previously the least considered, part of the Otago Provincial Estate. It cannot receive special record as the first voyage of exploration to the West Coast; but there must be a mistake somewhere, if it does not prove to be not only not the last expedition of the kind, but the precursor of many more. ”

“ Mountaineers and lovers of scenery should read Green's "High Alps of New Zealand," and T. Mackenzie's papers on West Coast Exploration. Mannering Fitzgerald and Harper are writers on the same topic. Murray's guide book will, of course, be the tourist's main stay. Delisle Hay's Brighter Britain deals in lively fashion with a settler's life in the bush north of Auckland and in the Thames goldfields. Reid and Preshaw have written of the Westland gold-seekers; Pyke of the Otago diggings. ”

“ The average height of the ranges on either side is from 2000 to 3000 ft.; and towards the headwaters, they are either the spurs or sides of ranges, which rise to nearly double that height and are snow-clad. Indeed, by these details, the lake, as a whole, resembles very much some of the Sounds which present some of the more subdued types of the peculiar scenery of the Otagan portion of the West Coast. ”

“ Nevertheless, I cannot help noticing that on this long stretch of coast between Napier and Wellington, there are only two tiny hamlets, there are scarcely any roads, nothing that could by any stretch of courtesy be called a harbour, and only a few little streams pouring their tribute into the Pacific Ocean. It is here, if anywhere, that the visitor realises the sparsity of the population, and by contrast the amount of energy that must be concentrated somewhere in order to have made New Zealand the much-discussed country that she is. ”

“ In all the other parts we have been in we have however found the sea coast only inhabited and that but sparingly, insomuch that the number of inhabitants seem to bear no kind of proportion to the size of the countrey which they possess, and this probably is owing to their frequent wars. Besides this the whole Coast from Cape Maria Van Diemen to Mount Egmont and seven eights of the Southern Island seems totaly without people. ”

“ In one way the south-western is the most enjoyable division of picturesque New Zealand. There is little here to regret or fear for. Unlike the beauty of the northern forests, here is a grandeur that will not pass away. Even in the thermal zone you are haunted by the memory of the lost terraces; but among the alps and fiords of the south-west Nature sits very strongly entrenched. From the Buller Gorge to Puysegur Point, and from Lake Menzies to Lake Hau-roto, both the climate and the lie of the land combine to keep man’s destructiveness at bay. ”

“ New Zealand is one of the most remarkable botanical regions of the world and nowhere are there more beautiful forests. The giant fern is so common that it is the emblem of the country.
The southwest coast of the South Island rivals both Norway and Switzerland in its scenic beauty. There the glaciers have made fourteen great sounds, walled with steep cliffs and lofty mountain peaks. ”

“ This harbour is very beautiful, and here the French commenced the first white settlement on the South Island. This is a great fruit growing district, and many ancient Maori relics and caves are to be found along the coast, which is a favourite resort in summer. The Peninsula is composed almost entirely of hills, ranging about 2,000 feet high. On these hills the cocksfoot grass is grown and harvested, as the seed commands a good price in local markets. ”

“ Stand on deck beside me and take a look at a storm off the coast of New Zealand. The green water of the shallow sea rolls toward us in vast waves. It is a seething, boiling mass. Our steamer mounts sea-green hills spotted with foam, and plunges down into valleys blanketed with white. Great billows chase one another like racehorses over the roads of the sea. They roar as they run with a noise like the thunder of a thousand Niagaras. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is no sportsman's country; but vegetation runs riot, the soil being remarkably fertile, clothing the wild lands with perpetual verdure and vigorous freshness.
The area of the islands known as New Zealand is about one hundred thousand square miles, being a few more than are contained in England, Wales, and Ireland combined. The entire coast line is four thousand miles in length. Out of the seventy million acres of land, forty million are deemed worthy of cultivation. ”

“ In the south-west corner, instead of rivers, we find a whole group of fiords, deep inlets running up between mountain walls and leading nowhere. Here [87] is some of the most beautiful but least known country in New Zealand; there are no railways and practically no settlement, as we shall find on our visit. In short, the island looks to the Pacific and turns its back on the Tasman Sea. On the east side there is more room. The province of Otago is hilly, but further north is the great expanse of the Canterbury Plains. ”

“ If this brokenness and inequality of surface oppose difficulties in the way of agricultural improvement, the variety and striking contrasts thereby produced must be often at least highly picturesque; and all, accordingly, who have visited New Zealand, agree in extolling the mingled beauty and grandeur which are profusely spread over the more favoured parts of the country, and are not altogether wanting even where the general look of the coast is most desolate and uninviting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ New Zealand is 1000 miles long and nowhere more than 150 broad. Cut in two by a broad strait and penetrated by numerous bays and inlets, it has 3000 miles of coast line, and is therefore more exposed from a naval point of view than any other equally fertile, wealthy, and thinly settled country in the world. That it is an outlying part of Australia is an illusion left on many minds from a casual glance at small maps of the Southern Hemisphere, but the illusion vanishes the moment we visit the country or consider the facts. Twelve hundred miles of open sea separate it from Australia. ”

“ In places Tongariro's slopes are riddled with fumaroles, in scoria cavities are hot pools, and more than four thousand feet above the sea are the steam-canopied Ketetahi Springs.
The Ultima Thule, or, according to legend, the portal, of New Zealand's thermal wonderland, is White Island, twenty-seven miles off the coast of the Bay of Plenty. White Island is a queer place. It is a sulphur pit, an acid tank. On it sulphur boils like treacle, and from a warm lake acidulous waters pour into the sea.
On White Island one must tread carefully, and test the treacherous ground as one goes. ”

“ In the art galleries are pictures both by English and New Zealand artists—some of England, Italy or the Mediterranean, others of New Zealand subjects. One of the most striking represents the coming of the Maoris [199] in the Arawa Canoe—supposed to have been in the fourteenth century. The coast of the new country is shown as a distant, blue headland; on the green sea is the brown canoe, crammed with swarthy, brown bodies in the last stages of exhaustion; some of the men able to point out the land, and some looking eagerly, others too weary to care. ”

“ The site of Auckland itself as well as the country round it is all volcanic, and in every direction are small cone-shaped, grass-covered hills, each just high enough for a pleasant afternoon's walk. From any one of their summits you look down on an innocent crater at your feet; on the hillside sheep browse and citizens play golf; and beyond, on a clear day, Auckland lies spread out before you—its streets and harbours, with sea and islands and distant forest ranges. The eastern harbour has no definite entrance, so numerous are the inlets and islands which you see on all sides ”

“ The summer mornings are always cool and exhilarating, and the summer nights often singularly beautiful and mild. New Zealand is divided into eight provinces, of which Auckland, Taranaki, Wellington, and Hawke Bay are on North island, and Nelson, Maryborough, Canterbury, Otago, and Westland on South island. ”

“ Every point, each sinuous bay and jutting headland, was rich in a varied vegetation of the brightest green, and as the softly tinted light—violet, crimson, and yellow—so characteristic of New Zealand sunsets, mingled with the deep blue of the sea as the shades of evening crept on, and the stars shone forth from above—the whole surroundings, as our vessel glided rapidly on her way, combined to form an ever-changing panorama of unrivalled beauty. ”