Page:Through South Westland.djvu/123

Rh scattered broadcast with so lavish a hand, clothing and re-clothing the living and the dead, one must wander away into the heart of this green Westland to realize it. Sometimes the path skirted deep ravines where we heard the river far below, but saw it not for the trees. Waterfalls came leaping down the mountain sides, scattering their spray over the nodding foliage. It was not altogether an easy path, and there were places where the waterfalls had eaten great holes, tumbling the stones in heaps at the bottom—where one trusted the horses to find a way through, rather than tried to guide them.

There was much red pine or rimu in this bush, one of the most magnificent and valuable of the forest trees. High in the forks of the various pines—eighty or a hundred feet perhaps above us—hung great masses of ghee-gheekiekie [sic] with sword-like leaves, three or four feet long, of a light green colour. From the centre springs a silky panicle of sweet, creamy or purplish blossoms, several feet in length, not unlike that of a cabbage tree. This is followed later by beautiful sprays of berries, red, yellow, and green, intermingled. It has a curious capacity for collecting and retaining water—not needed, one might imagine, in this damp forest, but pointing to its origin in drier lands. It is an epiphytic plant, native to Australia, Tasmania, and the Pacific Islands, but six of the species are peculiar to New Zealand. And this