as I appeared, ready and
eager to start; "but perhaps it is all the better to enable you to see
the track." They each flung an empty sack over their shoulders, felt in
their pockets to ascertain whether the matches, hooks, boxes of bait,
etc., were all there, and then we set forth.

At first it appeared as if we had stepped from the brightness of the
drawing-room into utter and pitchy blackness; but after we had
groped for a few steps down the familiar garden path, our eyes became
accustomed to the subdued light of the soft summer night. Although heavy
banks of cloud,--the general precursors of wind,--were moving slowly
between us and the heavens, the stars shone down through their rifts,
and on the western horizon a faint yellowish tinge told us that daylight
was in no hurry to leave our quiet valley. The mountain streams or
creeks, which water so well the grassy plains among the Malvern Hills,
are not affected to any considerable extent by dry summer weather. They
are snow-fed from the high ranges, and each nor'-wester restores many a
glacier or avalanche to its original form, and sends it flowing down the
steep sides of yonder distant beautiful mountains to join the creeks,
which, like a tangled skein of silver threads, ensure a good water
supply to the New Zealand sheep-farmer. In the holes, under steep
overhanging banks, the eels love to lurk, hiding from the sun's rays in
cool depths, and coming out at night to feed. There are no fish whatever
in the rivers, and I fear that the labours of the Acclimatization
Society will be thrown away until they can persuade the streams
themselves to remain in their beds like more civilised waters. At
present not a month passes that one does not hear of some eccentric
proceeding on the part of either rivers or creeks. Unless the fish are
prepared to shift their liquid quarters at a moment's notice they will
find themselves often left high and dry on the deserted shingle-bed. But
eels are proverbially accustomed to adapt themselves to circumstances,
and a fisherman may always count on getting some if he be patient.

About a mile down the flat, between very high banks, our principal creek
ran, and to a quiet spot among the flax-bushes we directed our steps.
By the fast-fading light the gentlemen set their lines in very primitive
fashion. On the crumbling, rotten earth the New Zealand flax, the
_Phormium tenax_, loves to grow, and to its long, ribbon-like leaves the
eel-fishers fas