protesting arms to heaven; tangled masses of tree-ferns and creepers still sent out living fronds and tendrils, though pitched headlong down the screes—everywhere ugliness and ruin:
“The ruined beauty wasted in a night,
The blackened wonder God alone could plan,
And builds not twice! A bitter price to pay
Is this for progress—beauty swept away.”
But the ruin and the ugliness are inevitable. Where there is gold, all outside beauty must flee away before the digger. The disused workings were a desolate place on a wet afternoon, and broken sheds and rusting machinery depressed one; and as I viewed these things, I sorrowed for the passing of the Forest. Behind me the hills were hidden in a pall of rain; in front stretched the gold-flat with a ragged row of poplars on its marshy edge; beyond that again, a blank wall of mist hid the Pacific, moaning sullenly on the sand. I was glad to come in to tea and a cheerful fire from these meditations.
In the hotel we had visitors. The only harbour-master south of Hokitika came and told us tales of a wonderful region where few have been; where the olivine rocks shine blood-red on either side of a tremendous gorge. “It’s the finest sight you’ll ever see,” said he; “the road’s none too good; you’ll need be careful in the rivers, specially the Haast; there’s many a man’s been washed down in the Haast, and they never come out alive—no, nor do the bodies neither.” We questioned him as to distance and accommodation. His brother-in-law
