FROM CHRISTCHURCH TO THE WEST COAST
At 8.30 one autumn morning, I left Christchurch, the City of the
Plains, to travel across New Zealand from the Pacific Ocean to
the Tasman Sea. The railway line runs westward through the great
Canterbury Plain, a fertile country containing some of the best
land in New Zealand for all kinds of farming. Long ago this plain
must have been covered with bush, for early settlers tell how in
ploughing they used to find the decayed stumps of forest trees;
now, on either side of the railway line, are fields of grass or
ploughed land--"paddocks," as they are uniformly termed--paddocks
of many acres, divided from one another by green hedges of hawthorn
or gorse. Scattered among them are homesteads and farm buildings,
all usually of wood with iron roofs, and round about the homesteads
are gardens, with fruit trees, poplars, drooping willows, oaks or
sycamores, the tall dark-foliaged "pinus insignis" from North
America, and the bright green sturdy "macrocarpa" pine from
California. Often, too, you pass a grove of Australian gums, the
clean grey trunks of the full-grown trees erect amid an undergrowth
of young blue-grey leaves.
There are flourishing little townships along the line, often
bearing familiar English names, such as Malvern or Sheffield. Forty
miles from Christchurch, the plain begins gradually to give way to
low hills, outliers of the distant Southern Alps; and after winding
up among them for another twenty miles the train reaches Cass, the
terminus. At Cass passengers are transferred to coaches drawn by
horses, which take them over the mountain pass dividing Canterbury
from Westland.
It is a wonderful mountain drive of twenty-six miles, and will in a
few years' time be superseded by the new railway line which is to
connect Cass with the West Coast by way of the Otira tunnel. This
tunnel is a difficult piece of engineering work, boring five miles
through the mountain and under a river bed. So far, only two and
a half miles of it is finished. Coach road and railway line follow
the course of a wide river bed, an expanse of rough grey shingle
and big stones, at its widest a mile across. The river was just now
a deep narrow stream in the middle of the stones, but in flood it
becomes a mighty and swift-flowing torrent. We forded the stream
without difficulty, the water only reaching to the horses' knees.
Then on up another valley beside another wide shingly river, which
became a narrow mountain stream as we followed its course. High
bush-covered hills were on either side, so high that at three in
the afternoon we drove in shadow, and watched the sunlight shining
on the opposite ranges. All along this valley are scattered the
huts of the men employed on the line, some of them tiny "wharés"
of calico stretched over a wooden framework, with chimneys of
corrugated iron or wood; better dwellings made of wood roofed
with iron, and usually only one small window; and there was one
smart house with a verandah--in this the chief engineer had been
living. Bonny children were playing about, and in the centre of
the railwaymen's township was the school with the school-mistress's
cottage--both of wood painted red.
We could see the entrance to the Otira tunnel on the hillside
above us, and soon we began the ascent of the pass, up a steep
winding road, and on reaching the summit, two thousand feet above
sea-level, left Canterbury behind us, and descended by an even
steeper road down into Westland. The Otira Gorge is far-famed, and
tourists come many miles to see it. Mountains covered with forest
tower up on either side, sombre and magnificent; in front are still
higher mountains, their snowy summits glittering in the sunshine,
and far away at the bottom of the ravine flows the Otira river, a
brawling mountain torrent. Ever the road winds steadily down, cut
from the hillside, in places supported on stays of wood or iron
driven into the rock, and at some places dangerously insecure,
where the face of the cliff consists only of loose rubble, and the
road has no solid foundation, and is liable to disappear after
storm and flood. There had been a slip only a few weeks before,
but the new track was safe enough as we drove over it; the five
horses were driven quickly, too, at a sharp trot all the way. The
forest on the eastern slope of the pass is almost entirely of
beech trees--tall and graceful, with small, glossy, green leaves,
evergreen for the most part, and which remain on the trees through
the winter, though in autumn some of them turn yellow or red. On
the western side are beeches too, but among them grow many pines
and other trees: the ferns and mosses are more luxuriant than on
the eastern slopes, while here and there you catch sight of a
waterfall rushing down a steep crag among the trees.
From Otira township a two hours' journey by train takes the
traveller on to Greymouth, which is reached just twelve hours after
leaving Christchurch.
Greymouth is a small township situated on the coast, built upon
level land at the mouth of the Grey River, which is wide enough to
serve as a harbour for ships of fair size, principally cargo boats.
The bar outside is sometimes so rough that ships can neither enter
nor leave, and Greymouth people would be glad of half a million
pounds with which to construct a better harbour. Most of the houses
are of wood and iron, the shops have outside verandahs, and the
roofs are usually painted red. There is a church of grey stone with
a spire, and other churches of less imposing appearance; a large
red brick post-office with a tall clock tower, as well as several
banks and hotels. Forty years ago, when gold was found in abundance
all along the west coast, Greymouth was a gayer and more thriving
town than it is to-day. It is now a coal mining centre and a market
for dairy produce.
Next day I left Greymouth, and went on by train to Hokitika,
twenty-eight miles away, travelling through the bush all the time.
There are clearings at intervals, with some sawmills at work, and
in other parts cattle and sheep grazing, and round Hokitika is
plenty of open country suitable for farmland.
Hokitika is just such another town as Greymouth, but smaller, with
a population of between two and three thousand. It, too, has
houses with red roofs, banks and hotels. In addition it has a fine
clock tower, set in an open space, and is the proud possessor of a
Carnegie Library of solid stone; in the reading room of the Library
I looked at a London _Graphic_ only six weeks old. Hokitika is only
a few miles from Kumara, the home of Mr. Dick Seddon, the late
Premier, and Hokitika and the West Coast generally owe a great deal
to his interest in their welfare.
Twelve miles from Hokitika, away to the east, is a lake called Lake
Kanieri, which I had been told was beautiful, so next morning I
hired a horse and went for a twelve mile ride along a road through
the forest in search of it. I found it well worth seeing--a lake
five miles long and two wide, surrounded on all sides by forest,
hills behind hills at the head of the lake, the most distant
streaked with snow. It was a dull day, with a strong wind blowing
from the lake, and the yellow-grey waves came dashing against the
shore in a line of white surf, like the breakers of some inland
sea. The distant mountains were deep purple, an intense, almost
black shade, toning into the dark green of the nearer hills.
From Hokitika the train took me on for another twenty miles to
Ross. I arrived there at sunset, a glorious sunset over the
sea--all crimson and gold--which turned Ross into an enchanted city
of grey mist, surrounded by low hills and trees bathed in a pink
glow.
Ross is a little town of seven hundred inhabitants, but
it is brilliantly lighted by electricity, and boasts four
churches--Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Wesleyan--and
it has seven public houses.
My further journey of seventy miles south was in the mail coach,
drawn by a team of four horses. We set forth at seven-thirty in a
grey dawn, which soon changed to a day of brilliant sunshine.
Just outside Ross is a gold mine, worked by electricity, on the
latest and most improved American methods. The power is brought
twenty-five miles from a waterfall near Kanieri Lake. Great things
are hoped from this mine, but at present there is so much water
in the workings that most of the time is taken up with pumping
out some millions of gallons a day. Beyond the mine we saw a gold
sluicing claim, with long wooden troughs running down from the hill
side. A great force of water is brought through an iron hose-pipe
and directed against the rocks, which it tears down; the fragments
of earth fall into the wooden troughs, the sand and gravel are
washed away, while the gold stays at the bottom.
Very soon we had our last sight of the sea, and for the rest of the
way drove through the forest. The West Coast forest extends for
three hundred miles between the sea and the Southern Alps, and to
the north of the Alps as well--a narrow strip of country varying in
width from fifteen to thirty miles, and I think that the further
south you go the more beautiful it becomes. It is a semi-tropical
forest in appearance, with its countless groves of tall and slender
tree-ferns, with their rough brown stems and thick heads of
drooping feathery fronds, a yard and more in length, and with its
amazingly luxuriant undergrowth of trailing creepers and lianes,
while daintiest ferns, mosses and lichens grow everywhere round and
upon the forest trees. The Westland forest trees are mighty giants,
and chief among them is the red pine or "rimu," as the Maoris call
it. This tree towers straight up to a height of a hundred feet
or so, then it branches out into a head of thick stems, becoming
quite slender at their tips, and drooping gracefully towards the
ground, clothed with long, coppery-green tassels, hardly leaves
at all, but green scales packed closely together, and giving the
tree the effect of being dressed in a "gay green gown" of shaggy
moss. Then there is the white pine, growing best in swampy places,
its enormous trunk buttressed like the clustered pillars of a
mighty church, at first bare, and then showing dense tufts of
green bristly spines high up against the sky; the black pine too,
with grey trunk and very dark green spines. Less tall than the
pines is the red birch or beech--the names are interchangeable in
Westland--its leaves the size of elm-tree leaves, but thicker and
more glossy, and all the branches now bearing bunches of dead,
brown flowers. Of the same size as the beech is the "miro," a tree
with smaller but equally glossy leaves, and berries beloved of the
New Zealand wood pigeon. The "totara" is a tree that reminds one of
the English yew, but its narrow leaves are longer and of a yellower
green. Enormous "rata" trees grow in this bush, their branches
thickly covered with myrtle-shaped leaves; the crimson flower was
quite over on the big trees, but on the rata-vine which drapes
many of the forest trees were still patches of red blossom among
the green. Close to the road were giant fuchsia trees, with either
yellow leaves or bare branches, for the fuchsia is one of the few
trees that sheds its leaves in winter.
One of the strangest trees is the lancewood, which, when young,
bears long narrow leaves like lances, pointing stiffly to the
ground; after some years' growth, the leaves become broader and
shorter and no longer point downwards, they grow straight out or
point towards the sky. Other New Zealand trees have this curious
habit of bearing different kinds of leaves at different stages
of their growth, and botanists see in it a reminiscence of the
changes that the plants' ancestors have lived through--varying
leaves suited to variations in the climate.
The New Zealand bush is for the most part a sombre forest of
many shades of green; though now the fuchsia is yellow, and the
pepper-tree's leaves are green and pink; while in spring the
clematis festoons the bush with masses of starry white blossoms; in
summer the rata blazes crimson, tree-veronicas and olearias show
purple and white, and the ribbon-wood bears the loveliest clusters
of fragile white flowers. When the sun shines, you forget that you
ever thought the bush sombre, so enchanting is the effect of light
and shade on stem and leaf. Shafts of sunlight glint through the
forest as through the aisles of some vast cathedral, bringing into
strong relief the waving light-green fronds of stately tree-ferns,
making a glorious harmony of green and gold, "all glossy glooms and
shifting sheen."
There is very little bare space in the Westland bush: all the
plants grow close together, struggling for their share of sunlight
and air; creepers climb to the tops of trees, and hang down in
long festoons; plants with long, lily-like leaves perch among the
branches, and sometimes hide the whole trunk with their drooping
greenery. Ferns of many species cover the ground and live high up
on the trees, and such lovely ferns they are: some have bright,
glossy fronds from six to eight feet long; there is bracken, tall,
with thick wiry leaves; or short and fragile, its fronds like the
most delicate green lace. The ferns that live on the tree-trunks
have usually short fronds, but sometimes they are over a foot in
length; the polypods are thick and shining, the "filmy" ferns of
such delicate texture that you can almost see through them. The
kidney fern, "trichomanes reniforme," is one of these transparent
ferns and grows in great abundance on the trees; it is shaped in
exact accordance with its name, and has its spores arranged round
the edge of the frond like a neat brown frill. There are beautiful
club mosses trailing over the ferns and draping the banks by the
roadside with garlands of bronze and green; and painted in for the
ground colour are green mosses and grey lichens, all shades of grey
and green with touches of copper; and on smooth banks coral red
berries lying among the mosses.
Every few miles we came to homesteads and clearings, where the bush
has been cut down and burnt, and grass sown for grazing; the ground
is too cold and damp for corn, but grass grows well and sheep and
cattle thrive. It seems sad to destroy such beautiful forest, but
settlers cannot make a living out of the bush, and as Government is
wisely keeping two or three chains of forest all along the road on
either side as well as other big areas of forest country, there is
no fear that the bush will entirely disappear before the settler's
axe.
During our seventy mile drive, we crossed several rivers and
creeks; only three of the rivers are bridged, the others must be
forded; it was easy work, as the rivers were low, but in flood time
they become roaring torrents, rushing over wide river-beds filled
with big boulders and rough shingle, and many lives have been lost
in the attempt to cross. From all the open spaces we had lovely
views of distant mountains, deep blue behind the green tints of
nearer trees, and often tall rimus standing out from the forest,
bronze tassels against a background of blue. It is not a level
road all the way--at one point I got down and walked on up a hill
between three and four miles, and looking back had a wonderful view
over the valley. I stood among the trees at the top, looking down
upon the forest stretching away for miles in billowy curves to
right and left, a blue haze over its greenness; and beyond, in the
far background, a mountain crowned with snow.
We passed three charming lakes, each one many acres in extent, and
all with trees right down to the water's edge, the ground rising
away from the water in gentle slopes. From the hill above one of
these lakes, we saw the snowy peaks of Tasman and Cook, fifty miles
away. On swampy land grows the New Zealand flax (phormium tenax),
which is now being exported in some quantity to Japan for use
in the manufacture of silk, and to Ireland to be used in making
linen.
[Illustration: THE WESTLAND FOREST. _To face page 101._]
At 1 p.m. on the second day after leaving Ross, we came to the end
of our journey--a solitary hotel, nestling under the mountains; and
the driver pointed out to me with pride the Franz Josef Glacier,
coming grandly down between the mountains to meet the forest, only
three miles from the hotel.