CHAPTER VI.
THE SHIELING ON THE MATUKITUKI.
“From the lone shieling of the misty island
Mountains divide us and a waste of seas,
Yet still the blood is warm, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.”
Round the foot of the mountains winds a track, which, if it were not for the rabbit-holes, might be thought a fairly good one in these parts. As it is, it is extremely perilous; and the fresh green of the flat is also full of bog-holes, and beyond the grass is the stony river-bed with its bright blue streams hurrying along, breaking into foam at the rapids and shallows.
Leaving our own sunny valley, we rode up the track to the junction where the western Matukituki issues from its gorge. It was a forbidding, desolate place; great bare mountains ran up in rocky pinnacles and serrated edges on either side. The bush, along the base, had been swept by some forest fire, leaving only a few scattered groups of beech. Though the sunshine was flooding over everything and the sky cloudless, the entrance to that gorge always to me had the same dread look, and a sentence kept running in my head: “Through the grave and gate of death we may pass to our joyful resurrection.”
