waggon, built in a very strong and substantial style, and it is drawn by
twelve span of bullocks.

Here and there among the fern, usually in the bottom of a gully beside
some patch of scrub, we have noticed little clusters of huts. These are
not Maori whares, as we suppose at first, but are the temporary
habitations of gum-diggers, a nomadic class who haunt the waste tracts
where kauri-gum is to be found buried in the soil. In a few places we
pass by solitary homesteads, looking very comfortable in the midst of
their more or less cultivated paddocks and clearings. These are usually
fixed on spots where the soil, for a space of a few hundred acres,
happens to be of better quality than the gum-lands around. At most of
these settlers' houses somebody is on the look-out for the coach, and
there is a minute's halt to permit of the exchange of mails or news. For
travellers along the road are very few in number, and the bi-weekly
advent of the coach is an event of importance.

The afternoon is wearing late, and the rays of the declining sun are
lengthening the shadows, when we emerge on the top of a high hill that
overlooks the valley of the Kaipara. A wide and magnificent prospect
lies spread before us. Far down below the river winds through a broad
valley, the greater expanse of which, being low and swampy, is covered
with a dense thicket of luxuriant vegetation. In parts we see great
masses of dark, sombre forest, but even in the distance this is relieved
by variety of colouring, flowering trees, perhaps, or the brilliant
emerald of clusters of tree-ferns. Right out on the western boundary a
line of hills shuts out the sea, and their summits glisten with a
strange ruddy and golden light--the effect of the sun shining on the
wind-driven sand that covers them. To the north the river widens and
winds, until, far away, we get a glimpse of the expanding waters of
the Kaipara Harbour. Successive hills and rolling ranges, clothed with
primeval forest, close in upon the valley.

About the centre of the broad-stretching vale, we discern a little patch
of what looks like grass and cleared land. There is here a cluster of
houses, whitely gleaming beside the river, and that hamlet is
Helensville--the future town and metropolis of the Kaipara.

The road, from the hill-top where we are, winds in a long descent of
about two miles down to the township. It is scarcely needful to say that
Dandy Jack considers it incumbent on him to make h