Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/42

28 laudable ambition of filling in a sketch of the phantasmagoria—for there is no other name for it—of a sunset over this same scene; but procrastination, and the succession of positive wonders in the way of scenery which we afterwards witnessed, have bedevilled that intention; and were it otherwise, cui bono? There is suggested just one little moral. Let no man say that the imagination of the artist, the extravagances of the scene-painter, or the ingenuity of the pyrotechnist, with his bluest and reddest lights included, is likely to produce what, in some one or other of Nature’s phases, does not find a parallel. There is a belief prevalent that the scene-painter is usually very careful to avoid a breach of the Second Commandment by painting his scenes as unlike as possible to anything “that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth;” but so extraordinary are the pictures which Nature herself here presents, that one cannot resist the conviction that, if he were desirous of doing what Nature cannot do, it “would give him some trouble to do it.”

Within a gunshot of Puseygur Point is Coal Island, which presents to the sea a front of a mile and a half, and is about 2½ miles long. Its highest point is 850 ft., but at the seaward end its height is less, and it presents a considerable area of table land, the soil upon which, we were told, is of the very best. Of course, at present it is—as is all the West Coast—covered with heavy and valuable timber. In its proper place, I shall refer to the different descriptions of timber which are here and elsewhere prevalent, and to their probable uses; for, we subsequently met with one who is a good authority on these subjects—I mean Mr Beverly, of Dunedin; and his presence on board the steamer, at a later stage of the voyage, constituted, in itself, a considerable accession to our sources of information. The sandstone formation of the island is very visible, despite the rich clothing of shrubbery on the cliffs, and it is an observable feature that the strata are more horizontal than at Puseygur Point, or in the country to the eastward, which, on the suspicion of coal existing there, well deserves prospecting. A noble harbour opens between Coal Island and Gulche’s Head, and this is Preservation Inlet—a mile and a half in width, and more than twenty miles in length, with the usual characteristics of the inlets of the coast, the soundings being shallowest at the entrance, and towards the head deepening, and deepening still, until the surveyors are content with putting down the depth at fifty, or a hundred, or hundreds of fathoms, and “no bottom.” Without any theoretical disquisition as to the formation of these inlets, it may merely be said as a guide to subsequent references, that the accepted opinion is that they are no ordinary excavations of the sea, but the valleys of a country once much more elevated than it even now is, and which, in consequence of their depression at some period, and of Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum, became filled with the waters of the ocean. Steaming close by the northern shore of Coal Island, we could see some relics, in the shape of woodwork, of the visit of the cutter “Pilot’s” party of coal prospectors, and on the first beach inside of Gulche’s Head, on the north side of the Inlet, we could distinguish a beacon which we accepted as an index of the presence of the coal-miners from Dunedin; but we could see nothing of the party. Fronting us was Cavern Head—one of the