Page:Through South Westland.djvu/278

172 Macpherson had packed up milk, cream, scones, eggs, and butter; and we said good-bye to her and rode away, considerably enlightened as to the other side of life on the Matukituki. “The Gate of Death” looked very grim and awful, but beyond it the mellow sunshine still lay on our valley, though the long shadows from the mountains had crept over its upper end. In a book of Australian verse I came across a poem one day by George Essex Evans, called “The Woman of the West.” It is rather long to quote, but some of it seemed to me just to describe the mistress of the Lone Shieling, and the life there of one who had faced the wilderness: