Page:Through South Westland.djvu/177

Rh the tide was low. My host insisted on walking to the ford, talking the while of those early days, and the hard fight with Nature; when stores came down at rare intervals in a coasting vessel, and they had to be very self-sufficing. One learns to reverence such lives—lived thus in the wilds, yet keeping fresh and clean the ideas of home and religion, honesty and justice. Then the horses came round a bend and we said good-bye; his last little act of courtesy was to cut me a riding switch of supple-jack, and hand it to me as we rode away. When we entered the Okuru there was but a foot of water, and at the point we had reached in the morning we found a sunny stream, rippling over shingly shallows, where then it had flowed a deep, blue river.

I did so want to go farther—not to have to turn homewards; but it was not to be—and perhaps after all it left a glamour over this last day—the glamour of the unattained; always the thing longed for is greater than the thing achieved, as the seeking is an intenser pleasure than the finding.

The people of the West had welcomed us everywhere, had bidden us come back to them; but would we ever come?

Ah! little Okuru, lying in the sun by your lagoon, where the daily rise and fall of the tides is the chief event; with your children playing by your sunny waters, and the big mountains