*280 
Memoranda of an Excursion 
-Distressful Nature pants. 
The very streams look languid from afar; 
Or, through th’ unshelter’d glade, impatient seems 
To hurl into the covert of the grove.” 
Thoms. Seas. Summer. 
Cheering my native fellow travellers, we struggled 
on together up the steep hills; gaining the summit of 
the wooded mountainous range, we descended over open 
fern-land into extensive swampy plains. I observed those 
pests to agriculture, the large-leaved docks (R. crispus 
and R. obtusifolius ), to be very plentiful here among 
the fern; where they attain to a great size, 4-5 feet in 
height. The natives say, that the Ngapulii tribes (who 
live in the northern parts of the island, and with whom 
they were formerly at continual enmity) sowed the seeds 
of this plant hereabouts, in order to spoil their lands.* 
I doubt, however, the cause assigned for its introduction 
here in the very centre of the island, but not the fact. 
At Poverty Bay, and parts adjacent, the natives assert, 
that the seed of the dock, was originally sold them by 
whites for that of the tobacco plant! Various species 
of the genus Rumex are now too frequent in several 
districts, in common with many other noxious European 
weeds. I have often noticed, in travelling, certain spots 
abounding in the rankest vegetation, but without a 
single indigenous plant. The new comers appear to 
vegetate so fast, as quite to exterminate and supersede 
the original possessors of the soil. In crossing a very 
* This alleged act of the Ngapuhi army, reminds us of what we read 
in the Sacred Writings, of the ancient custom of sowing the city of the 
enemy when taken with salt.— Judy. ix. 15. And, in more modern 
times, “ the city of Milan was burnt, razed, sown with salt, and ploughed, 
by the exasperated Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.— Comp. Sys. Geog. 
v. p. 822. 
