Page:Through South Westland.djvu/17

Rh they must go too. They cannot live elsewhere, and of many settlements, especially in the North Island, the lament is only too true:

It is a new and baffling world to the traveller where the old order is often reversed, and where he is bewildered by the strangely foreign look of leaf, and tree, and plant. He hears familiar names, or strange Maori ones that remain but a moment in his head: but strange or familiar, they seem to convey nothing to his mind. Vainly the eye wanders round seeking something familiar—something other than a fern, of which it might be said, “I know to what that belongs.”

I went into the forest ignorant of almost every species. How I longed for someone to tell me its secrets, to make those baffling problems of the bush plain to me! I was bewildered; all one’s European ideas seemed only to make matters worse. I heard of pines, but not one among the many species seemed even faintly to resemble those I knew. Take for instance the lily family in New Zealand: not a single species calls to mind a lily. Cordyline australis, the cabbage tree of the settlers, grows to a great size, with