1835. WAIMATE. 428 
he said. This, however, was quite sufficient: I was a good 
listener, an agreeable person, and he never ceased talking to me. 
At length we reached Waimate. After having passed over 
s0 many miles of an uninhabited useless country, the sudden ap- 
pearance of an English farm-house, and its well-dressed fields, 
placed there as if by an enchanter’s wand, was exceedingly plea- 
sant. Mr. Williams not being at home, I received in Mr. Da- 
vies’s house, a cordial welcome. After drinking tea with his 
family party, we took a stroll about the farm. At Waimate 
there are three large houses, where the missionary gentlemen 
Messrs. Williams, Davies, and Clarke, reside; and near them 
are the huts of the native labourers. On an,adjoining slope, 
fine crops of barley and wheat were standing in full ear; and in 
another part, fields of potatoes and clover. But I cannot attempt 
to describe all I saw; there were large gardens, with every fruit 
and vegetable which England produces; and many belonging to 
a warmer clime. I may instance asparagus, kidney beans, cu- 
cumbers, rhubarb, apples, pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, 
olives, gooseberries, currants, hops, gorse for fences, and Eng- 
lish oaks; also many kinds of flowers. Around the farm-yard 
there were stables, a thrashing-barn with its winnowing machine, 
a blacksmith’s forge, and on the ground ploughshares and other 
todls : in the middle was that happy mixture of pigs and poultry, 
lying comfortably together, as in every English farm-yard. At the 
distance of a few hundred yards, where the water of a little rill 
had been dammed up into a pool, there was a large and substan- 
tial water-mill. 
All this is very surprising, when it is considered that five 
years ago nothing but the fern flourished here. Moreover, 
native workmanship, taught by the missionaries, has effected this 
change ;—the lesson of the missionary is the enchanter’s wand. 
The house had been built, the windows framed, the fields 
ploughed, and even the trees grafted, by the New Zealander. 
At the mill, a New Zealander was seen powdered white with 
flour, like his brother miller in England. When I looked at 
this whole scene, I thought it admirable. It was not merely 
that England was brought vividly before my mind; yet, as the 
evening drew to a close, the domestic sounds, the fields of corn, 
the distant undulating country with its trees might well have 
