150 Voyage of the Novara. 



because tlie necessary moment has not yet come ! " We 

 returned to Oraki, our efforts vain to induce any Maori 

 volunteer to make a cruise. 



A not less interesting excursion was made to the Kauri 

 forest in Titarangi, among the Manukau hills, to which 

 we were conveyed in a couple of dog-carts. It was an 

 exquisitely beautiful sunny morning. The air was so in- 

 vigorating yet so mild that we immediately felt how well 

 Sir Humphrey Davy's celebrated remark about Nice, 

 " mere existence here is luxury," may also be applied to 

 Auckland. After a drive of three hours through charming 

 fields and meadows, we entered upon the forest at a spot 

 where an Irishman named Smith has erected a block-house 

 and a saw-mill, which seemed to do an excellent business. 

 The whole appearance of the farm and its residents made 

 a most favourable impression. Old Smith accompanied 

 us in person to the forest, which consisted principally of 

 the lofty, slender, broad-leaved Kauri pine. These have 

 much more the look of chestnut trees than fir. The whole 

 forest displayed a luxuriance and beauty of vegetation 

 such as we had not anticipated in these latitudes. Creepers, 

 parasites, and tree-ferns, gave it quite a tropical character. 

 There were a charm and a voluptuousness about this green 

 garb of nature, as displayed in New Zealand, such as the 

 virgin forests of even the Nicobars or Java could hardly sur- 

 pass in grace and majesty. 



The slender trunks of the Kauri pine, the Rimu (^Dacrydium 



