PKEFACE 



But what do we see and what do we hear, 

 and what through our eyes and ears do we 

 not owe to the masters of verse? It has 

 become impossible in prose to witness a 

 great sea rolling into a shallow ba}^, to 

 think of woods lashed with rain, of wind 

 among the dunes, of grey and dewy turf whose 

 greener markings show w^here wild things have 

 trod at dawn, of sudden airs that dim the 

 shadows of a water expanse and shiver in silver 

 along its blue, of noon in summer when green 

 tendrils flag. The breezes stream and the seas 

 flow; but they bear a new meaning and a new 

 melody, something the savage has never known. 

 Perhaps only in this are we moderns the 

 happier breed of men; that the poets are as 

 Eolian harps through which our primitive 

 senses pass. To each phase of nature, sweet or 

 severe, are added apt images, tender thoughts 

 and sequences of immortal words. Away from 

 our fellow men and alone, what can we see or 

 hear or feel that is lovely and pure and of good 

 report, without a flow of thoughts that are not 

 our own? 



My companions and helpers in earlier sojourn- 

 ings in Stew^art Island were bushmen and 

 fisher folk; but during the spring and 

 summer of 1911 I had for assistants J. C. 

 McLean, with whom I had previously worked, 

 and John Leask, owner of the little craft — 

 ' ' Te Atua. ' ' Than John Leask we could have got 

 no better man, for he knew from life-long 

 experience what could and what could not be 

 ventured reasonably. J. C. McLean was a friend 

 of older standing, and to him again I owe much 

 in the way of help. 



