# Through South Westland/Part 1/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
BY THE WATERS OF WESTLAND.
A land of streams! Some like a downward-smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro’ wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush’d: and dew’d with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.
Tennyson.
“The ruined beauty wasted in a night, The blackened wonder God alone could plan, And builds not twice! A bitter price to pay Is this for progress—beauty swept away.”
But the ruin and the ugliness are inevitable. Where there is gold, all outside beauty must flee away before the digger. The disused workings were a desolate place on a wet afternoon, and broken sheds and rusting machinery depressed one; and as I viewed these things, I sorrowed for the passing of the Forest. Behind me the hills were hidden in a pall of rain; in front stretched the gold-flat with a ragged row of poplars on its marshy edge; beyond that again, a blank wall of mist hid the Pacific, moaning sullenly on the sand. I was glad to come in to tea and a cheerful fire from these meditations.
In the hotel we had visitors. The only harbour-master south of Hokitika came and told us tales of a wonderful region where few have been; where the olivine rocks shine blood-red on either side of a tremendous gorge. “It’s the finest sight you’ll ever see,” said he; “the road’s none too good; you’ll need be careful in the rivers, specially the Haast; there’s many a man’s been washed down in the Haast, and they never come out alive—no, nor do the bodies neither.” We questioned him as to distance and accommodation. His brother-in-law ​would put us up, and he lived at the very end of the Main South Road, where it can go no further because of an impassable country of deep fiords and mountains guarded by precipices. This sounded truly fascinating. Like the harbour-master, the parson was the last on the Coast. He might travel 200 miles and come to no parish boundary, and to visit those few sheep in the wilderness meant long days in the saddle and on foot in that lonely land. There was a doctor too, also the last, and from him we heard of a wild night ride, seventy miles through rivers and over mountains, to save a woman’s life; and how when he had done his share, he found there was no one to nurse her but men who knew not what to do; how he sat by her bed tending her for a week till the danger was past, and another urgent summons came for him to go back; of the terrible ride through flooded rivers, in storm and rain, ten hours on relays of horses; to fall ill at the end from exposure and fatigue.
But Ross was a very different place when the sun shone, and I forgot all the dismal impressions, and remembered only the kindness and friendliness of everybody. We left it on one of those wonderful balmy West Coast days of perfect blue—blue of sky and water, bush and mountain: is there anything in the whole world like it? Riding out of the town we passed the sluicing operations in full swing; saw the irresistible power of the great hose turned on the face of a hill that came crashing ​down before it in tons of red clay and rock. We saw the muddy water flow back from the cliff face into channels paved with wood, where it leaves its silt from which the gold is taken; heard how this, later, is melted into rude bricks to be sent away; and the man who explained it to us told us that they were at present taking out £4,000 a month. I think those bricks must be just like the talents of gold of King Solomon. The roar and noise were deafening; and they told us, were the man who seemed with such ease to direct the nozzle of the hose to get in front, he would be dashed against the cliff like a straw in the wind. Round the bend of the hill almost all trace of man and his works ceased, and we rode along the fringe of the bush some distance inland, with the sea on our right hand, through ever-changing scenes. Now it was across a wide river-bed, through blue streams breast-deep; now down a leafy tunnel where the great trees met, and all beneath, save for that lonely road, was a tangle of creepers, lianes, and ferns. The sunlight lay in bright patches among the tracery of mauve shadows on the road; or at times the shade was too dense for sun to penetrate. Vistas opened of far-rolling hills and purple gorges, clothed everywhere with unbroken forest—no impression had been made by the few small clearings along the coast on that great solitude. We saw ahead of us a house, the Waitaha, with name and sign, all alone in a clearing by the roadside; beyond it the road led ​on and on straight through the heart of the bush. Here we halted. We strolled away in the afternoon to see Lake Ianthe, being told it was but three-and-a-half miles off; but it seemed nearer five. At any rate it was well worth the walk. The road wound down to it through magnificent forest, where the tree-ferns expanded glorious fronds fifteen or twenty feet long, and everywhere grew a wealth of exquisite greenery. Strange new forms—new at least to our eyes—constantly attracted the attention. What the forest lacks in brilliancy of flowers, it gains in its wonderful variety of form. Except the ratas and a red honeysuckle, most of the flowers are white, or green and inconspicuous; but their perfumes are there, and every shade of green and gold and brown. Between the tall shafts of the trees we caught glimpses of a shining water, and we made our way to the shore and sat there entranced. The reflections were perfect: every leaf and twig, mountain summit, and sunset cloud lay there, as in a great looking-glass.
We heard we should have a forty-two mile ride next day, because the next stopping-place was occupied by a party of bridge-builders, and there was no room for ladies. So we made an early start—only those who have ridden out thus into the forest in the freshness of early morning, can know anything of its perfect beauty. It is a different beauty from the glory of noon-day, or when the evening shadows fall: it seems to cry aloud and sing for joy. The tuis and the bellbirds were calling with those notes that, for me at least, have far more music than the nightingale’s—no bird, unless perhaps the bul-bul, has any notes like them. I only asked to go on and on: give me more, ever more, of these sights and sounds, these perfumes, this utter loveliness!
As we passed Ianthe it lay all blue and fair in its setting of green, the water just ruffled here and there by a light breeze. Two large rivers, the Little Wanganui and the Big Wanganui were crossed with ease, though as we went south they were getting more turbulent. There is a little settlement here, where we stopped for a ten-o’clock breakfast. Our welcome was, as always, most kindly, and we were given fried trout with new potatoes, apricots and cream—a truly astonishing ​bill of fare! They told us we were very lucky in thus crossing the rivers, for the heat was bringing down sudden floods from the melting snows in the ranges.
When we left this sunny, beautiful spot, we entered on a lonely bit of road, except for an isolated house or two at long intervals, which looked helplessly small face to face with the forest. Rosy children would run out from them to wave to us, and I always wanted to go in and see who lived in these lonely spots. I did too, sometimes. I used to hear touching little tales, and the women especially were glad to see me. Once it was a story of a young girl, brought up in the palace at Copenhagen who followed her sailor-husband out to this far land, in utter ignorance of the life before her. She found herself alone—cut off by rivers on each side from neighbours twenty miles away. She dared not cross them on her horse; the forest frightened her as much as the rivers. “What did you do?” I asked. “I cried for two years; then my baby came—that comforted me, and I cheered up a bit. I gave up thinking about getting back when I had three or four of them wanting everything!” Now they are all grown men and women, and in forty years she has never seen one of her own people. She showed me groups and photographs taken in Denmark: the beautiful old burgher house, with grave, prosperous-looking men and women; the palace and the streets of Copenhagen. How ​much lay behind that little story; but it was only one among many—the common lot of a pioneer’s wife.
Far south it is even more isolated—only this generation has been born and brought up on the Coast. The old generation came from another world. There is a certain sense forced upon one of the smallness and feebleness of man, when brought face to face with the Forest—when from some hill-top you look out over that undulating sea of green-blue hills and valleys, all untrodden, all impenetrable, wherein is no open track or glade save only up the bed of a torrent. Then it is borne in on the mind how easily one could be lost—“swallowed in vastness, lost in silence, drowned in the deeps of a meaningless past.”
“Ah!” said our host, “they were good old days! We youngsters learnt a lot mixing with men of education; it was grand to sit round the fire o’ nights and hear the talk—and they made us enter into it too, for they insisted on us reading. We have the schools now all down the Coast, but there’s not the same chance; we never hear the talk we did in the early days.” At every place they were loud in praise of the Government. A telephone connecting the whole length of the Coast was under construction, and soon every small settlement would have its connection. One ​of the women said to me: “It’s almost the same thing as having neighbours and living in town; we can talk to each other in the evenings—they let us keep the wire as long as we like. Oh, I don’t mind the bush now we’ve got the telephone!”
But the afternoon sun was drawing towards the west, and we mounted once more, and rode away on the lonely road skirting the foot-hills that always reminded me of the coast of a yellow sea. Here it was part marshland, part good grazing—surely when the plain is drained it will wave with golden crops and raise the finest cattle in the West. Late that evening we came to Lake Whahapo—a silver mirror, where a crested grebe made its slow way across in an ever-widening V of ripples. Tiny lamps of phosphorescent light glowed under the ferns that bordered the track—tired as I was, the peace and beauty of it all held me in its spell. Just as it grew dark we reached the Forks Inn. There was light enough to make out the stables across the road, and to recognize Mr. Heveldt, the host, who came and led away the horses, while his jolly Irish wife gave us hearty welcome. It was a merry household, and as Transome washed at a tin basin in the kitchen, I could hear peals of laughter as she entertained him the while—interlarding her remarks with threats to “Kill Baby Franz Josef, if he wasn’t a good boy!” She called the baby after the glacier—not the Emperor.