5 2 In the South Seas 



III 



of scenery which is indescribably lovely. The trees 

 of New Zealand, particularly the shore-growing trees, 

 are very varied and of great beauty and richness of 

 colour ; but the monarch of them all is the pohutu- 

 kawa, whose foliage resembles somewhat that of a 

 large-leafed species of ilex, but whose picturesque 

 limbs and glorious flowers are peculiar to itself. 

 The former stretch themselves right out over the 

 sea in the quiet bays ; and to look on the magnificent 

 scarlet blaze of the stamens of the latter, setting the 

 bright, still water below them aflame, just about 

 Christmas time, is worth the voyage to New Zealand 

 ten thousand times over. Really, I used sometimes 

 to find it difficult to realise that I was actually catch- 

 ing wild fish amid such brilliant beauty ; and a half- 

 sort-of-a-suspicion that I am poaching the gold-fish 

 in Chatsworth Conservatory, and a wonderment 

 whether the old Scotch gardener would come and 

 catch me, would come over me, ever and anon, in 

 spite of myself. 



* You catch all kinds of fish — snappers, rock-cod, 

 and what not ; the spoon is a novelty, and they rush 

 at it like women at a new fashion in bonnets. But 

 besides these, — the fish, not the women, — you come 

 across the kahawai, a fish which for beauty, pluck, 

 and everything but flavour, has a perfect right to 

 consider himself the worthy representative of Salmo 

 salar himself in these seas. 



' The first rush of a kahawai is really splendid, and 

 your reel acknowledges his power by discoursing as 



