Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/169

Rh foundation as the stories of flocks of moas having been seen, within living memory, stalking over the neighbouring mountains, nor can I trespass on your patience any longer with remarks upon the fauna and flora of this part of New Zealand. The supply of timber seems almost inexhaustible. Ducks and other wild fowl are numerous. Whales and seals abound, as well as excellent fish of various kinds. We were tolerably successful in shooting and fishing. I may enliven this part of my address by reading Dr Hector’s animated account of one of our seal hunts, in which, however, we were not fortunate. ‘On one occasion,’ he states, ‘the chase of five seals with the steam pinnace of the ‘Clio’ in the waters of Milford Sound affords a novel and exciting sport. The seals, startled by the snorting of the little high-pressure engine, instead of taking their usual dignified plunge from the rocks into deep water and so vanishing out of sight, went off at full speed diving and reappearing in order to get a glimpse of the strange monster that pursued them so closely. The utmost speed that we could make barely kept us up with them, until they began to show signs of distress, and one by one doubled and dived under the pinnace. Two of the seals held out for a run of three miles, and succeeded at length in getting into safety among the rocks on the opposite shore of the sound. From the experience of the run, the force at which seals can go through the water would seem to be not less than six or seven miles an hour.’ On the occasion to which Dr Hector here refers, we, unfortunately, had not our rifles with us, but on subsequent days, as was stated above, I shot several large seals, in addition to a number of wild ducks and other water fowl.”

Sir James Fergusson, Baronet, was the next Governor to visit the West Coast. He reached Hokitika overland from Christchurch on Tuesday, 2d December 1873. In addition to the procession on landing, there was a banquet and torchlight procession. Some feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction was occasioned through a want of forethought or pre-arrangement on His Excellency’s reaching town. After meeting the County Chairman (Mr H. L. Robinson) and others, and receiving and replying to an address of welcome from the hands of the Mayor (Mr William Todd) and the Borough Council, the coach conveying the Vice-Regal party did not proceed along the line of route intended. This marred the proceedings to some extent, but the matter was explained at the banquet. The reception otherwise was in every way worthy of the citizens of the newly constituted Province, a proclamation for the alteration of its constitution from that of a County to a Province having just been received from Wellington. Sir James Fergusson’s experience of the weather of the coast, which is so much the subject of satire with those who have regularly realised it, was such that his sensitiveness was excited as to his having to appear before the people covered with dust. His successor, the Marquis of Normanby, made his debut under very different circumstances.

On the 21st of February 1877, the Most Honourable the Marquis of Normanby reached Hokitika by sea. In addition to experiencing some of the difficulties of connection with the outer world under which settlement had been promoted on the West Coast, he had also an opportunity of realising the occasional vastness of the resources on