1 66 Voyage of the Novara. 



forest and its luxuriant vegetation, we coasted along now on 

 this side, now on that, as though we could never weary of the 

 mingled grandeur and beauty of this magic scene. Still further 

 to enhance the magnificence of natm-e in her present mood, 

 a tremendous thunder-storm broke over us in the course of 

 the afternoon, when the forked lightning played like arrows 

 of fire above our heads, and the thunder rolled in deafening 

 peals, which were taken up again and again by hundreds of 

 mountain eclioes. 



'' In the evening the sky cleared, and we reached the Maori 

 village of Tuakan, where we were made welcome, and the 

 best hut in the place assigned us. The evening was one of 

 peculiar interest, it being that of Sylvester's day, or the eve of 

 the New Year of 1859, which will scarcely soon again be 

 spent by Austrians at the antipodes. Our entire party 

 camped upon the floor of the hut, two torches, stuck into the 

 mouth of a couple of empty bottles, shed an uncertain light, 

 while an iron kettle served as punch-bowl, in which a " brew," 

 something resembling '' Punch," was, by dint of the joint ex- 

 perience of the English and German members of the excur- 

 sion, compounded out of the spirits we had brought with us. 

 Ere long the chorus went round, and we had German songs, 

 alternating with English, Irish, and Scotch melodies, and even 

 melancholy New Zealand love-songs, sung by some of the 

 Maories present. 



'' As the evening, and with it the dying year, wore on, some 

 little difficulty, natural enough under the circumstances, arose, 



