Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/187

 and slopes around are dotted with bright houses. A sluggish creek meanders through the marshy reaches of the lower valley, broadening as it goes, till near the beach it widens into a lake, which gleams like silver in the morning rays.

Another long tunnel leads us now into a richly cultivated valley with numerous farms, the thin scraping of snow on the low-lying hills betokening that winter is at hand.

In this valley lies Mossgiel. Its tweed factory is favourably known all over Australasia, and the products of its looms have achieved a reputation for excellence, equal in its way to those of the famous West of England fabrics. Beyond the tidy trim-looking village rise bold hills, white with their winter vestments. The whole scene, with its snug farms, peaceful herds, clean-cut stubble, trim hedge-rows, and smiling village in the plain, and the white solitary grandeur of the lone silent mountains beyond, affords one of those sharp enjoyable contrasts which are so characteristic of New Zealand scenery.

As we move still further south, evidences of the abnormal rigour of an exceptionally early and severe snowstorm are everywhere apparent. The valleys are all flooded. Shattered trees with broken branches cumbering the ground, give the orchards a mournful look. The very flax and raupo clumps have been broken and flattened, and in many straths the stooks are rotting in the sodden fields. And this is only the early part of May.