d 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. Beyond this the river flowed as placidly as a lake, in cool
green depths, reflecting every leaf of the forest on the high bank or
cliff opposite. To our right it stretched away, with round headlands
covered with timber running down in soft curves to the water. But on our
left was the most perfect composition for a picture in the foreground
a great reach of smooth water, except just under the bank we stood on,
where the current was strong and rapid; a little sparkling beach, and a
vast forest rising up from its narrow border, extending over chain
after chain of hills, till they rose to the glacial region, and then
the splendid peaks of the snowy range broke the deep blue sky line with
their grand outlines.

All this beauty would have been almost too oppressive, it was on such a
large scale and the solitude was so intense, if it had not been for the
pretty little touch of life and movement afforded by the hut belonging
to the station we were bound for. 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. It
really was like walking down the side of a house, and no one could stir
a step without at least one arm round a tree. I had no gun to carry,
so I clung frantically with both arms to each stem in succession. The
steepness of the cliff was the reason we could take in all the beauty of
the scene before us, for the forest was as thick as ever; but we could
see over the tops of the trees, as the ground dropped sheer down, almost
in a straight line from the plateau we had been travelling on all day.
As soon as we reached the shingle, on which we had to walk for a few
hundred yards, we bethought ourselves of our toilettes; the needle and
thread I had brought did g