Page:Through South Westland.djvu/13



is the story of a ride—of a five weeks’ wandering in the Back-blocks of a land still in the making—a land whose conditions, even to-day, are often primitive. Properly speaking, there is no story—only impressions, gathered in those wanderings: things I saw, things I heard, in isolated settlements, where the men and women, living face to face with Nature, seem to show a readier kindness; where the robuster virtues still thrive, and the heart of the race is young.

Looking back now from under English skies, surrounded by sights and sounds of an English summer, it seems very far away: a land apart—a people who belong almost to another world.

An enchanted land of cool, dim, forest aisles: of lonely snow-peaks filling the end of some purple gorge: of rushing, hurrying streams: of untouched solitudes, where one goes all day long in wondering worship.

In the House of the Forest a voice calls to one unceasingly, and bids one understand. Those to whose spirit it has spoken can never more be