BY FOREST WAYS IN NEW ZEALAND
[Illustration: BERRIES OF SUPPLE JACK _Frontispiece_.]
BY FOREST WAYS
IN NEW ZEALAND
BY
F. A. ROBERTS
[Illustration]
HEATH, CRANTON, LTD.
FLEET LANE, LONDON, E.C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WELLINGTON 9
II STEWART ISLAND 20
III OVERLAND TO MILFORD SOUND 29
IV THE COLD LAKES OF OTAGO 47
V THE NEW ZEALAND EDINBURGH 58
VI AMONG THE SOUTHERN ALPS 64
VII CHRISTCHURCH 79
VIII FROM CHRISTCHURCH TO THE WEST COAST 86
IX THREE WEEKS IN WESTLAND 102
X THROUGH THE BULLER VALLEY 119
XI THE COPLAND PASS 128
XII THE WESTLAND GLACIERS 143
XIII THE WAITOMO CAVES 167
XIV NEW ZEALAND'S WONDERLAND 178
XV AUCKLAND 194
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOURED BERRIES OF SUPPLE JACK _Frontispiece_
_To face page_
A SANDY COVE--STEWART ISLAND 22
CLINTON RIVER--TE ANAU LAKE 30
LAKE WAKATIPU 47
OTAGO HARBOUR 59
ROAD BETWEEN FAIRLIE AND THE HERMITAGE 66
MOUNT COOK LILIES 72
RIVER AVON AT CHRISTCHURCH IN WINTER 81
THE WESTLAND FOREST 101
FRANZ JOSEF AND ALMER GLACIERS, FROM CAPE DEFIANCE 110
MOUNTS SEFTON AND FOOTSTOOL, FROM COPLAND PASS 132
GLACIER HOTEL, WAIHO GORGE 143
ICE PINNACLES, ALMER GLACIER 149
MOUNT MOLTKE AND VICTORIA GLACIER, FROM CHANCELLOR RIDGE 159
SOUTHERN ALPS, FROM MOUTH OF WAIHO RIVER 164
LAKE ROTORUA 179
MAORI ANCESTRAL FIGURE 197
By Forest Ways in New Zealand
CHAPTER I
WELLINGTON
The ship which brought me to New Zealand called first at
Wellington, the capital city, with a population, as I afterwards
heard, of ninety thousand.
Ships steam up a narrow, rocky channel into the harbour, which
widens out into an area of fifty square miles, with deep water
right up to the town, and wharves adjoining the chief streets. All
round the harbour are hills, most of them now cleared of trees
and grass-grown; but in 1840, when Wellington was founded as a
Colony under the British Crown, it was a tiny settlement of huts
ringed about by miles of untouched forests; and you realize with
never-failing wonder how great a change has been wrought in a very
short space of time. The town is built along the water front and up
the hills behind, and is spreading every day higher up the hills
and round the pleasant bays with which the rocky coast is indented.
To the stranger the noteworthy fact about these houses is the fact
that they are of wood, and as nearly all have red roofs, when you
see them perched upon the green hillsides, you wonder if you have
come to some big toy town. Later you find that only the residential
houses are invariably of wood; most of the public buildings--Post
Office, banks, Town Hall and shipping offices--are of solid, grey
concrete on steel frames; and both wood and steel are designed to
resist the earthquake shocks which often visit the city, though not
as a rule with great severity.
To a visitor from England all is strange and yet surprisingly
the same as things left behind at home. Here is a big city with
excellent shops, at which every imaginable need can be satisfied.
You can buy clothes of every description--pretty dresses and hats
or useful boots; there are jewellers and photographers; sellers of
books, music or pianos; a depôt for Liberty's art needlework; and
outside one of the florists' shops was a notice "Tree-ferns packed
and despatched to all parts of the world."
Tramcars run through streets paved with wooden blocks. On all sides
are men, women and children, dressed--many of them--in the latest
fashions from London or Paris; and it is no foreign country that
you have reached; for the shops have English names and familiar
advertisements of Bournville Chocolate or Pears' Soap, and all
these people are your own fellow-countrymen.
More than that, they are all possible friends, as I found before I
had been two hours in Wellington. I asked some question of a lady
in one of the tramcars, and after a little conversation she took me
to a restaurant for "morning tea." Here, in a large and airy room,
where all the small tables were decorated with vases of flowers
on spotless white tablecloths, we were served with date-scones
and sandwiches by girls tastefully dressed in green and white.
The same day, my friend of the morning entertained me in her own
home with afternoon tea and dinner. All this kindness was shown me
because I was, as she explained, "a visitor from Home," and it
was a pleasure to make me welcome in the new country. All through
New Zealand I met with the same open-hearted friendliness and
hospitality.
The shops, like those in other colonial towns, differ from English
ones in having outside verandahs--roofs of corrugated iron on iron
posts; the verandahs make the shop interior a little dark, but
afford most useful screens either from sun or rain. The town is
known as "Windy Wellington"; and it is said that you can anywhere
recognize a Wellington man by the way in which he holds on his
hat at street corners; the wind blows away microbes and keeps
the inhabitants healthy, but is very wearing both to clothes and
temper, and it is never wise to allude to it.
Neither is a strong wind always blowing. I have been in Wellington
on calm days of glorious, sunny weather, when the town lay bathed
in golden light, the blue harbour reflected the blue sky, and
all the surrounding hills were blue, with peaks behind paling to
grey in the distance. From the top of any of the hills that crowd
closely together in narrow ridges behind Wellington, you look down
on the town and on the irregular promontory on which it stands. On
one side of the promontory is the harbour--a thread of blue water
running out to the open ocean; and on a clear day, you look beyond
the harbour to the coast of South Island with the snowy peaks of
mountains near the coast. On the western side of the promontory,
you can see over the thirty-three miles of Cook Strait to the
nearest point of South Island, where blue headland and island,
separated by purple shadows, rise confusedly from the sea.
At your feet, sheep feed on the short, sweet grass; and here and
there in the gullies are still trees and ferns, reminders of days
gone by.
The Dominion Parliament meets at Wellington in a wooden building
that was until recently Government House; and the House of
Representatives sits in the old ballroom, to which visitors are
admitted by ticket. I went twice to hear the debate.
The Speaker's Chair is a small throne cushioned in crimson velvet,
set under a carved canopy of polished brown wood; on the right sat
Mr. Massey and the members of the Government; on the left, Sir
Joseph Ward and the Opposition. There are galleries at either end,
one for reporters, the other for strangers and members of the Upper
House; and round the room was set a row of chairs for members'
wives. The Mace was on a table in front of the Speaker's Chair.
The whole building is far too small, and will soon be replaced by
a larger and grander house, of which the foundations have already
been laid close to the present one.
Near the Houses of Parliament is the Museum, a small wooden
building, in which there is very little room adequately to display
all the treasures, and some have to be packed away and not shown at
all.
The chief treasure is a Maori house--not a house for living in,
but one in which the Maoris used to hold councils--a native Town
Hall. It is a long, narrow house of one room, with a high-pitched,
sloping roof, and it had originally one door and one window, both
side by side at one of the narrow ends. Ranged against the two
long walls are grotesque, carved, wooden figures of ancestors of
the tribe of Maoris by whom the house was made--these figures are
carved out of blocks of dull, red wood, and are three to four
feet high; pieces of glittering blue and green shell are fastened
in for eyes, and all the figures are ornamented very effectively
with circular patterns in chip carving; there are sixteen figures
on either side, and other figures again at both ends. The wall
space between each figure should be filled in with reeds set close
together, and crossed by narrow strips of wood fastened by thin
bands of flax; in this house at Wellington, the reeds have all been
replaced by wood, fluted, and painted a pale yellow; the ancestral
figures too have been raised some way above the floor. Originally
the walls were only the same height as the figures, and the roof
sloped from the ridge-pole to the carved heads. The Maoris used to
squat on the ground at their assemblies, so they did not need great
height in their council halls.
Besides the entire Maori house, this museum has other specimens of
Maori carving; such as a wooden verandah; and, set up on a high
post, a tiny wooden room, slightly ornamented with carving; this
latter the Maoris used as a food-store. Here too, I saw Maori
clothing: aprons for men and women, all made of flax, woven tightly
at the top and the ends left long and loose; there were long cloaks
of flax, decorated with thrums of flax tied at intervals over the
outer surface; sleeping mats too, neatly woven of flax.
Among the natural history exhibits the greatest curiosity is the
"moa," an extinct New Zealand bird, who had no wings, but used to
stalk over the country on enormous legs. No complete specimen of
this bird has ever been found, but many eggs have been dug up, and
sufficient bones and feathers for naturalists to reconstruct a
life-sized model. There the bird stands, like a huge grey emu; as I
stood by the side of it, my head reached the middle of the bird's
thigh. There are several eggs on view--large white eggs, the size
of cocoanuts; and some feathers, soft grey fluffy ones, like those
of the emu, with whose feathers the model is covered. Present-day
New Zealand birds are to be seen, with fish and beautiful shells
from the South Seas. There are a few unexpected curios; such as a
scrap of red and gold brocade from a cloak worn by Charles I; also
certificates from Langley, Buckinghamshire, stating that two people
named Powell, were in 1690 "buried in woollen, according to law."
Wellington has pretty public gardens, extending over many acres
up the hillside and down to a well-wooded ravine, and everywhere
native trees and ferns flourish. Below the hill is a broad stretch
of level ground, where you find flower-beds gaily planted with
English asters, zinnias and sweet peas, and shady pergolas with
climbing roses.
There are Zoological Gardens too, spread over another hill on the
opposite side of the town: the cages for birds and animals are
set among trees--high dark pines, with undergrowth of lighter
green--and the animals are rather hard to find as you trudge up and
down the steep paths. A brown bear was in a cage, with the usual
pole for him to climb: there were a fine African lion and lioness,
sea-lions in a pond, monkeys, lemurs, squirrels and opossums;
a good selection of many-coloured parrots and cockatoos from
Australia, and most gawdy macaws from Malay.
I was most interested in a native "kiwi," which I persuaded the
head-keeper to find for me. The kiwi lives in the bush and only
walks abroad by night, so that when he is in captivity he retires
during the day to the darkest, innermost recesses of his cage. The
keeper found him and pulled him along by his beak--a bird the size
of a large hen but on longer legs; it has a very long slender beak,
and fluffy, grey feathers, and resembles its giant relation, the
extinct moa, in having no wings.
In addition to gardens close to the town, Wellington has lately
acquired several thousand acres of forest land round a sandy bay
across the harbour. Here you find tall "rimus" and "totaras," green
ferns and mosses, and many lovely tree-ferns--the variety with
white undersides to their fronds, which in old days the Maoris
used, like children in a fairytale, to mark out trails.
In springtime, the hills behind the town and the high cliffs
along the shore are dazzling with golden broom and gorse; and on
sandhills, where it has been planted to bind the sand, the yellow
tree-lupin grows as freely as a buttercup.
Wellington has a large boys' school and fine University buildings.
The University is affiliated to the Colleges of the other large
towns, and women are admitted to degrees on equal terms with men.
There is always a steady air of bustle and business about
Wellington; it is an important port--big ships come and go, with
cargoes to be discharged and taken; and the fact that it is the
seat of the Government makes it a necessity for the Governor and
his suite to live here for several months of the year, and also
brings New Zealanders from all parts of the Dominion.