Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/32

16 one of the great offshoots of the Mother Country, its success will be largely due to these adventurous pioneers, who are subduing the wilderness, and preparing the way for the settlement of a large population.

Hitherto this venture has generally been limited to the plains and lowlands, but Tripp and Acland have acquired a lease of 50,000 acres in mountain country, eighty miles south of Christchurch, and have invited me to visit their "station" on my journey southward. Acland has lent me a horse which, amongst other good points, can swim well,—a matter of no small importance in a country where rivers abound, but no bridges. My outfit is intended for a journey of several weeks: a roomy saddle, with convenient saddle-bags, a light tether rope, and a waterproof roll, containing change of clothing,—locally known as a "swag," and also a very necessary companion, a pocket compass.

A few miles from Christchurch the scanty signs of cultivation disappear, and before me a great plain of tussock grass spreads out till it is lost in the south in blue haze, but is bounded, westwards, at a great distance, by the Southern Alps. One's first impression is that of strange loneliness, unlike the solitude of mountain country. Not a companionable rock or tree, or even a hummock of earth, to break the monotonous expanse of yellow brown grass; and a still silence, for there is no sound of insect or bird life, no rustle of any ground game, no trace of any wild animal. It seems that New Zealand is almost unique in this respect, for with the exception of pigs brought by Captain Cook and running wild, there is no animal life in the country, no reptiles, no snakes, no fish in