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daily lie has to pass over mountain-torrents and steep river-banks ; 
or through swamps and morasses. The slender paths of the na- 
tives lead over hills and mountains in steep ascent and des- 
cent, rarely in the valley, nearly always along the ridge of 
mountain-heights. Where they cross the bush , the clearing is just 
broad enough for one man to wind himself through. An eye 
used to European paths, will scarcely recognise those Maori-trails, 
and man and beast would be in continual danger upon them — 
the horse, in danger of sinking into the deep holes between the 
roots of trees, and of breaking its legs; the rider, of being 
caught among the branches, or strangled among the loops of the 
“supple jack.” Hence there is no other choice left but to travel 
on foot; and it requires full , unimpaired bodily strength, and sound 
health, to pass uninjured through the inevitable hardships of a 
longer pedestrian journey through the New Zealand bush, over 
fern-clad hills, over steep and broken headlands, through the swampy 
plains and cold mountain-streams of the country. Whatever the 
traveller needs for his individual wants, he must carry with him, 
and therefore must be limited to the most necessary articles. Now 
and then, a solitary European squatter may be met with; and 
more frequently still , a Mission station. On all these occasions 
the traveller will meet with a cordial welcome , and hospitable 
treatment, and transiently ho will enjoy even the comforts of civil- 
ized life; but, taken as a general thing, lie must resign them all; he 
must learn to find pleasure in living in the open air with the skies 
for a canopy and the earth for his table and bed. Following the 
example of the Maoris , he must “go back to first principles” and 
to the simple demands of the children of nature; and it is to this 
truly primitive simplicity that a journey in New Zealand owes its 
indesirable charms. 
The woods and fields of our antipodes are but scanty hunting- 
grounds, which at best yield small birds and wood-pigeons. Along 
rivers and lakes various kinds of wild-ducks are found, and nearly 
all the rivers are abounding in eel and crawfish. But this is all, upon 
which one can calculate during the trip as occasional contributions to 
