d the wind is high, we
attempt to burn a great flax swamp, perhaps, in some of the flats. This
makes a magnificent bonfire when once it is fairly started, but it is
more difficult to light in the first instance, as you have to collect
the dead flax-leaves and make a little fire of them under the big green
bush in order to coax it to blaze up: but it crackles splendidly; indeed
it sounds as if small explosions were going on sometimes. But another
disadvantage of burning a swamp is, that there are deep holes every yard
or two, into which I always tumble in my excitement, or in getting out
of the way of a flax-bush which has flared up just at the wrong moment,
and is threatening to set me on fire also. These holes are quite full of
water in the winter, but now they contain just enough thin mud to come
in over the tops of my boots; so I do not like stepping into one every
moment. We start numerous wild ducks and swamp-hens, and perhaps a
bittern or two, by these conflagrations. On the whole, I like burning
the hill-sides better than the swamp--you get a more satisfactory blaze
with less trouble; but I sigh over these degenerate days when the grass
is kept short and a third part of a run is burned regularly ever spring,
and long for the good old times of a dozen years ago, when the tussocks
were six feet high. What a blaze they must have made! The immediate
results of our expeditions are vast tracts of perfectly black and barren
country, looking desolate and hideous to a degree hardly to be imagined;
but after the first spring showers a beautiful tender green tint steals
over the bare hill-sides, and by and by they are a mass of delicious
young grass, and the especial favourite feeding-place of the ewes and
lambs. The day after a good burn thousands of sea-gulls flock to the
black ground. Where they spring from I cannot tell, as I never see one
at any other time, and their hoarse, incessant cry is the first sign you
have of their arrival. They hover over the ground, every moment darting
down, for some insect. They cannot find much else but roasted lizards
and, grasshoppers, for I have never seen a caterpillar in New Zealand.

In the height of the burning season last month I had Alice S---- to
stay with me for two or three weeks, and to my great delight I found
our tastes about fires agreed exactly, and we both had the same
grievance--that we never were allowed to have half enough of it; so we
organized the most delightful exp