Page:Through South Westland.djvu/155

Rh strikes one so forcibly. League after league, range beyond range—

Not even natives inhabited these solitudes in the past, nor any four-footed beast—nothing but the birds. The Maori invaders from the north, who came for the precious greenstone to be found in the river-beds, made no settlements among the hills, and left but a few small ones along the coast. Perhaps it is the only country in the world without history. Even the heart of Africa or Greenland has its traditions and folk-lore—here it is writ only in the rocks and immemorial trees. Its lords were the spirits of mountain and river—their Temple the house of the Forest.

To-day a new order slowly creeps in; bit by bit the forest will be conquered; bit by bit the Temple must be despoiled. The columns in that Temple seem up to now almost to defy the hand of time. There is the matai or black pine, whose growth is so slow that it may almost rank with the giant kauri of the North Island, which takes a thousand years to come to maturity. Living or dead it is well-nigh indestructible. Buchanan, the botanist, tells of a black pine found lying in the bush, over which three broad-leaf trees had grown, enfolding it in their roots. He calculated these trees to be 300 years old—yet the matai was perfectly sound and was split up for fencing G