of the different artificers, soon involved the people in
very embarrassing intricacies and much bodily labour, occasioned by
the prodigious variety and numbers of climbers, briars, shrubs, and
ferns, interwoven through the forests, and almost totally precluding
access to the interior of the country. From the appearance of these
impediments, and the quantity of rotten trees which had been either
felled by the winds, or brought low from age, it is conjectured, and
plausibly enough, that the forests in the southern parts of New
Zealand had escaped the hand of human industry since the origin of
their existence. But nature, we may often see, is prodigal of life,
and in the very act of dissolving one generation, seems to rejoice in
providing for another that is to succeed it. Thus, we are told, there
sprouted out young trees from the rich mould, to which the old ones
were at last reduced. A deceitful bark, it is added, sometimes still
covered the interior rotten substance, in which a person attempting to
step on it, might sink to the waist. Such were the common
disappointments in this Utopia. The naturalists had to add to them,
the appropriate mortification of seeing numerous trees and shrubs, of
which, as the time of flowering was past, it was impossible to make
any scientific examination, and which, accordingly, only tantalized
them with the idea of the profusion of new vegetables in this
interesting country. A short residence here, especially during wet
gloomy weather, proved that all was not so perfect in this climate as
had been fondly imagined. The land about Dusky Bay, and indeed
throughout most of the southern extremity of this island, was found to
consist of steep rocky mountains, with craggy precipices, either clad
with impenetrable forests, or quite barren, and covered with snow on
the tops. No meadows or lawns were to be seen, and the only spot of
flat land that was found, presented so much wood and briars as to be
useless for either garden ground or pasture, without very considerable
toil. This heartless description is somewhat relieved by a glowing
picture of the scenery about what was called Cascade Cove, which seems
to have arrested the attention of Mr F., and which, he says, could
only have justice done it by the very successful pencil of Mr Hodges.
The soil here was found to be