Page:Through South Westland.djvu/121

Rh mysterious charm of this forest world. On and on we rode in the dewy freshness: round steep mountain flanks, up deep gorges, along rock-cut ledges where the yellow sunshine lay bright and warm on the rocky way, catching at times vistas of high mountains towering above us, shrouded always in impenetrable bush—it was, above all things, a forest ride. Always there was the crowding undergrowth beneath—that riot of green-life, of forms strange to our eyes, beautiful in their infinite variety. And everywhere were ferns. Who shall tell of the exquisite beauty of that fernery? They seemed to grow in colonies, sometimes of one kind, sometimes of another; and every fallen mossy trunk was covered with delicate hymenophyllums, like green lace. They climbed along the living branches, they draped the brown stems of the tree-ferns from base to crown—there they live and die uncared for, generation after generation, perfect in their beauty. There are as many as twenty-nine of this species alone, from H. rufescens an inch long, to H. dilatum growing to a couple of feet or more. In shine and shade alike the kidney-fern hung out its glossy lobes of satiny-emerald, shaped exactly as its name implies. They vary from an inch across to three or even four. They creep up the trees and over fallen logs, each separate leaf on its brown, hair-like stem, the delicate edge set with tiny, bead-like seed vessels. When the sun