THE LITERATURE OF THE STATION 289 



can be only in the tropics, or in the temperate regions 

 when a hot wind hamstrings the body and prostrates the 

 mind. A tropical thunderstorm was plainly impending. 

 The husband appealed pitifully to the doctor. " Doctor, 

 can you do nothing to carry her through ? You know 

 that she cannot endure a thunderstorm." The doctor 

 could do nothing, but He who can do all, or almost all, 

 heard the prayers doubtless fervently made by the despair- 

 ing husband and the sceptical but sympathetic doctor. 

 The woman sank into a deep and heahng slumber, and, 

 when she awoke, the storm had passed away. 



True literature is also the little volume written by 

 Lady Barker on Station Life in New Zealand, though 

 (or because) it professes only to " record the brighter 

 and less practical side of colonisation." The letters of 

 which it consists photograph " the expeditions, adven- 

 tures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of a 

 New Zealand sheep-farmer." They leave exactly the 

 impression that her husband. Sir Frederick Napier 

 Broome, states that they are designed to convey — of 

 a simple way of life that is metaphorically as well as 

 literally at the antipodes of the " highly wrought civi- 

 lisation " of England. She too takes in her environment, 

 and attempts to dehneate the phenomena in a Canterbury 

 sky Avhich forerun a hot wind from the north-west, 

 although she confesses that "no one but a Turner 

 could venture upon such a mixture of pale sea-green 

 with deep turquoise blue, purple with crimson and 

 orange." She tells eloquently of the familiar arch in 

 the clouds over the mountain range to the west before 

 (she says, but surely also during) a violent gale from 

 the north-west. " It was formed of clouds of the deepest 

 and richest colours ; within its curve lay a bare expanse 

 of a wonderful green tint, crossed by the snowy silhouette 

 of the Southern Alps." That glorious chain of mountains 

 forms the panoramic background of the whole Canterbury 

 province. In the very early morning she would stand 

 shivering at her window " to see the noble outhnes gradu- 

 ally assuming shape and finally standing out sharp and 



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