CHAPTER III.
OKARITO.
Watch the cloud and shadow sailing o’er the forest’s sombre breast;
Misty capes and snow-cliffs glimmer on the ranges to the west.
Hear the distant thunder rolling; surely ’tis the making tide,
Swinging all the blue Pacific on the harbour’s iron side . . . . .
Now the day grows grey and chill, but see on yonder wooded fold,
Between the clouds a ray of sunshine slips, and writes a word in gold.
The very name had an odd charm about it—something suggestive and musical. I looked curiously at the line of weather-beaten little grey houses straggling along a stretch of green above the beach—a grey beach of stones and shingle with hardly any sign of life, except a few children and one or two cows and horses straying about. Whatever its future, Okarito belongs to the past—to the day when busy mushroom-towns sprang up in the track of the gold-seekers; when the eager, shifting throng rushed from place to place as reports spread of fabulous finds of gold. I doubt if there were, when I saw it, fifteen inhabited houses, counting the two hotels; yet they told me once it had boasted twenty-five hotels and three theatres, and a population of several thousands! One wonders where they all are to-day. A great and abiding peace possesses it, and it was hard to realize the tales I heard of the days of the gold fever, when those grey sands of the beach yielded a wondrous
