Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/78

60 week. "There!" said the small boy, "and I put away my toys yesterday." From his point of view he had lost a day. Staying there that night, I learnt that they had discovered in the clefts of the rocks boulders which are geodes of amethyst and chalcedony crystal, and very curious water worn clay stones, shaped as if turned out by a lathe in many forms, discs, spirals, bunches of grapes, flattened out, and some almost the shape of a watch, with a handle. The next morning, with hammers and rope, we descended to the riverbed below the gorge, not liking the look of the precipitous rocks, and finding a favourable place, worked our way up about two hundred and fifty feet, and secured some very fine specimens of amethyst crystal, perfect in shape, and of deep colour, and then, after some effort, got safely to the top with our spoil.

Towards evening I rode to another station, in a beautiful nook in the hills, where Mr. Phillips has established himself with a large family. His sons manage the sheep, and it has been his pride to create in a wilderness as lovely a garden and as fruitful an orchard as one could find at home. It is ten years old, but here all growth is much faster than in England. A friend of his, also with a family, lives close by, so that together with the huts of the employees the place is like a small village. I have an evening service, and next day give some time to teaching the children, and late in the afternoon make my way across a low pass, which is a short cut to my home in the Malvern hills, winding up to the top of a rocky saddle, and downwards by the side of a considerable patch of forest. It was growing dark, and in amongst the trees I caught a glimpse of a fire, round which a group