RAMBLES ROUND DUNEDIN. 2 1 1 



the lack of foreknowledge which caused them to halt on 

 these Pisgah heights and forbade their advance into the 

 deep rich soil of the plains. Away south-west, beyond the 

 Waihola Hills, we see the high ground behind Waiwera. 

 Maungatua stands up to a height of 3000 feet and bars our 

 western view, but northwards of it rises the long line 

 of the Lammerlaws and the Rock and Pillar Range, their 

 4000 feet wall barring further vision. To the north-west 

 and north lie Mount Allan and the Silver Peaks, while 

 the Kakanui Mountains bound the view almost to the 

 sea again. 



It is a wide prospect, stretching over a hundred miles, 

 and very beautiful in many directions, especially down the 

 harbour and over the Peninsula, but it just lacks what 

 Ruskin considered the essential feature of a landscape, the 

 historic association. Think of the view from the terrace 

 of Windsor Castle, with its rich and lovely champagne 

 country ; or from Salisbury Crags over Edinburgh, how 

 every inch of ground is alive with memories of the past ; 

 or that noble landscape from the brow of Kinnoul Hill, 

 with the fair city of Perth and the beautiful sweep of the 

 Tay at one's feet, across to the wooded slopes of Moncreiff 

 Hill, up Strath Earn to the right and down the famous 

 Carse of Gowrie to the left ; or, again, the lovely view from 

 the hill behind Heidelberg across the vine-clad valley of 

 the Neckar and away down the Rhine. How the poet and 

 the historian make these and other well-known spots live 

 again in our imaginations! But here there "is no storied 

 past " ; the human element which gives such a charm to 

 these old lands is wanting, and even nature is not seen at 

 her best in this our age of transition. 



The bareness of the surface to-day and the lack of animal 

 life give little indication of the conditions which prevailed 

 half a century ago, before guns and fires, cattle, sheep and 

 rabbits, had so altered the state of affairs. Masses of flax 

 and speargrass, intermingled with tussac, matagori scrub, 

 snowberry, and anise, covered the open ground, and among 

 these grew a great profusion of smaller heaths and nerteras, 

 yielding abundant food for birds. In spring and early 



