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blazed up brightly, and the natives were singing their songs; then, 
every thing lay hushed in repose, till, with the dawn of another 
day, the birds of the woods, the Kokorimoko, and the Tui merrily 
warbled their orison-lays. I love to look back to such scenes , to 
our river-excursions in the well-manned canoes of the natives , to 
our stay in their Pahs, and to our peregrinating through the bush 
in the shade of trees, which are strangers to every other part of 
the globe, — I look back to them all with a pleasure, which 
makes me feel most sensibly, how far superior the enjoyments of 
nature are to all the pleasures of refined life. 
On the 7 th of March we were ready for travel. We set out 
upon the Great South Road. This road, — now the great high- 
way to the interior of the country, — was at that time finished 
only as far as Drury, twenty-three miles from Auckland. Drury 
itself consisted of an inn and a church. At a greater distance 
there were some scattered farms. The Drury Hotel or “Young’s 
Inn,” so called after the name of the proprietor, was, so to say, 
the last out-post of civilization towards South. During the presence 
of the Novara in the harbour of Auckland, this hotel was the 
head- quarters of the Novara Expedition, whence excursions were 
made to the coalfields near Drury and to the Waikato; and a 
huge Austrian flag was floating from its gable. This time also it 
was our place of rendez-vous, and our starting point. 
March 8. — Started for the Maori settlement Mangatawhiri 
on the Waikato, twelve miles from Drury; thence we were to 
proceed in canoes up the river. The road leads from Drury 
in a southerly direction over the Drury flats and then ascends 
to a wood-clad plateau, which forms the watershed between the 
Manukau Harbour and the Waikato River. On the sides of 
small dales the last farmer settlements are met , and thence the 
traveller penetrates deeper and deeper into the forest. The 
road was just being made. The recent cuts displayed basaltic con- 
glomerates totally decomposed into ferruginous clay. One of the 
II ochstetter, New Zealand. 19 
