FOREST SCENERY. 373 



arm of the sea, and on the borders of a forest. Here we> 

 found no very splendid accommodation, and plenty of mos- 

 quitoes, so that we were glad to rise early on the following 

 morning, and, after a delicious bath in a cold spring hard by, 

 take our guns on our shoulders and depart for the forest. 



Amongst the wonderful and stupendous works of nature, 

 none stand forward more pre-eminently than a New Zealand 

 forest. Trees of vast sizo and great variety were covered 

 with blossoms and foliage of every colour, but so intermatted 

 with creepers and parasites that it is almost impossible to 

 make any way through them. In the words of a celebrated 

 surveyor:* " So thick are the creepers and supplejacks, that 

 I have often been bound up by them, like the lion in the net, 

 and compelled to call out to my men to come and cut me out 

 with their bill-hooks. There are many mossy dells filled 

 with leaves and branches of trees. I remember to have once 

 slipped in making my way down a gully filled with trunks 

 and branches, and I am certain I sank through thirty or 

 forty feet of vegetable matter, which might have been there 

 ever since the Deluge. All this is very romantic and 

 enchanting, but how does it suit a farmer? Then the 

 beautiful and meandering streams are constantly in the way, 

 sometimes overflowing the banks, and reducing all the level 

 land to the condition of swamps, covered with the most 

 inveterate flax, the edges of which are almost as sharp as a 

 razor. Sometimes the stream is dammed up by blocks of 

 trap rock, which refuse to wear away, and the consequence is 

 a basin deep enough to float a seventy-four gun ship, which 

 it is necessary to pass round." 



Very few parts of the forest can be traversed except 

 by the tracks made by nature. No animals are indi- 

 genous to the country except the mouse and the bat, and 



* Mr. Brees. 



