to the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand—to the lovely anchorage off the town of Kororarika, which had been the scene of some fierce fighting with the natives some years before. Our object was merely to take in a few sheep and vegetables, but as we had a day to spare, four of us were induced to start off for the famous Keri-Keri falls, some fifteen miles from where we were anchored. We had to pull some ten or twelve miles up a river, and after various little adventures “by flood,” such as running aground on sand-banks, stepping out and dragging the boat over into deep water, taking a stray shot at wild-ducks, &c., we landed at last at the Missionary Station where our travels “by field”—though fields there were none—were to commence. When we had discussed our potted salmon, and washed it down with sundry bottles of ale and porter, we set off in good spirits for the falls, led on by a guide at the rate of five miles an hour. Our way at first lay along a well-beaten sheep-track, across a flat country; but before we had got more than a mile and a half, our guide was evidently all abroad, and led us through swamps and a thick ti-tree scrub. When we reached plain ground again, no river was to be seen, no fall to be heard, although we had travelled more than the distance necessary to bring us to it. Our spirits were by this time a little damped, and our bodies more so, for the rain had been pouring down in torrents; still we went on, determined (if possible) to see the object of our visit, a fall of some eighty or ninety feet in height. At last we came to the stream, and a low distant murmuring was heard, which we were sanguine enough to believe might be the water-fall, but whether up the river or down the river we could scarcely tell. We went up for a few hundred yards—the sound gradually increased, but never approached to anything like a roar, when, on coming to a sudden bend of the river, we espied a fall of some four or five feet!—all we had to repay us for our long scramble through the scrub and swamps. Our guide now honestly confessed that he was “lost,” and had no idea where we were. We set off down the stream, hoping to stumble upon the object of our visit, but we had no time to make a long search, as the sun was rapidly going down. There was nothing for it but to strike off across country again for the station where we had left our boat, which we managed to reach just as the sun was setting. Thus, then, having failed in our attempt to reach the falls, our readers must excuse a description of them.
The river, by the way, is a splendid one for salmon ova to be sent out to—one of the very best at the Antipodes for that purpose. The rivers in the Hutt Valley, at Wellington—one also in the Canterbury Settlement—are worth a trial. Any of the New Zealand streams are better adapted for salmon than those in Australia, or even Tasmania.
We cannot resist the temptation of relating the following anecdote of the Apostolic Bishop of New Zealand, the scene of whose adventure lies here. He had persuaded the Bishop of Newcastle to start with him from Sydney on a missionary cruise in his little yacht to New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Loyalty and other islands in his then extensive diocese. Like ourselves they put in at the Bay of Islands. The Bishop of New Zealand wished to show his brother of Newcastle a little of the country, and for that purpose proposed to take him to a distant station on the other side of this very river. The ground was soft and boggy, as we had found it, and the Bishop of Newcastle had never been accustomed to “rough it” in such a country as this. He could ride his fifty miles a day in his own diocese, but his hardy brother always walked, and besides there were no horses to be had here. Always neat and spruce in his dress, looking “as if he had just come out of a bandbox,” and afraid like a cat to wet his feet, he picked his way most carefully and delicately, unlike his brother Bishop who tramped on “through thick and through thin,” till at last they came to the river side. The river was swollen with the heavy rain which had been pouring down in torrents for some days previously, and he of Newcastle looked awfully puzzled, wondering how they were to cross—neither bridge nor ford being visible in any direction. He was still further puzzled, when he saw the Bishop of New Zealand without a word deliberately taking off shoes, leggings, stockings, and last of all his breeches. In reply to his brother Bishop’s “whatever next?” he coolly collected his various articles of dress, and stepped into the river up to his apron, calling out as he did so, “Now then, Newcastle, off with your breeks, and follow your leader!” There was no help for it, as there was no other means of crossing the river, and the good Bishop invariably refused to be carried across by any of his Maori suite, on the ground that it was not right to treat such noble fellows “like beasts of burden.”
This modern Apostle used to think nothing of travelling from Auckland, on the north-eastern side of the Upper Island, to New Plymouth, or Taranaki, on the south-western side—thence across country to Wellington, through Wanganui, Weikanei, and Porirua; then across the straits to Nelson in any vessel