606 



HORSES — KAURI PINE. 



Dec. 



with them, had other duties allowed of following my own incli- 

 nation. 



Riding across a valley close to Waimate, we passed some 

 young horses of a good breed, though fitter for the saddle than 

 for agricultural purposes. They were the produce of mares 

 brought from Sydney. A picturesque wooden bridge, which 

 had been thrown across the stream at the bottom of the valley, 

 reminded me strongly of one well-known in England ; and 

 caused that rush of associated ideas sure to follow an unexpected 

 meeting with the semblance of an object familiar in other days. 



In a large wood I saw the noble cowrie (kauri) pine. The 

 trunk of this gigantic offspring of New Zealand is in size and 

 shape like an immense antique column. From the ground to 

 the lower branches, more than ninety feet have been mea- 

 sured ; and around the trunk, at a yard from the ground, 

 more than forty feet ; while thirty feet in circumference is not 

 an uncommon size. But the upper portions are comparatively 

 meagre, and utterly devoid of any of the beauties so remark- 

 able in our English oaks, cedars, and firs. The woods of New 

 Zealand have rather a naked appearance ; for the branches 

 seem inclined to grow upwards instead of spreading, or fea- 

 thering. 



Cantering along, across an open easy country, passable for 

 wheel carriages, we soon approached Keri-keri. A deep ravine, 

 into which a considerable stream falls over a precipice about a 

 hundred feet in height, was pointed out to me as the limit of 

 an arm of the sea which penetrates from the Bay of Islands. 

 The waterfall is rather picturesque. Passing on over rounded 

 hills covered with fern, I almost started at a thoroughly 

 English scene suddenly exposed. In the valley beneath, a 

 quiet little village ; a church-like building of stone, with a 

 clock on the tower ; an English cutter at anchor, with her 

 ensign flying, in the arm of the sea before-mentioned, close to 

 the village ; gardens full of flowers, surrounding the neatly- 

 built and white- washed cottages ; cattle grazing about the sur- 

 rounding hills ; and a whole school of little English children, 

 hallooing and screaming to one another as they played in a 



