Page:Through South Westland.djvu/299

Rh Thumb’s mother and the pudding, and threw it away! The pièce de résistance being gone, we supped off green peas and potatoes, scones and red-currant jelly, and agreed, as we were leading the simple life, any meat was superfluous luxury.

Next day, for the first time, islands of silver-white cloud appeared in the blue, and sudden puffs of wind came from the north-west. We were up early, and by seven o’clock were riding over the flat, the bunnies popping about in all directions, and the river singing its loudest, as it does in the mornings; by afternoon it will be full two feet deeper and will have ceased to sing. We crossed near the entrance to the “Gate of Death,” and rode along a bridle-track beneath the Bluff which juts out at the meeting of the waters. Plenty of good grass grew all along the foot and up the lower slopes, and I now discovered what it was that gave it the yellow appearance I had seen from a distance. A common species of St. John’s wort has taken possession of this side of the valley, and is fast destroying the pasture. Here was another forsaken homestead; the garden run wild—and from it the plant had come originally, from a few seeds planted by the settler’s wife, which some one sent to her from home in a letter. She treasured it till one day a stranger, passing up the valley, said to her: “You will rue it if you keep that plant in your garden.” Forthwith she threw it over the fence, and now it has spread in dense yellow patches for miles in this fertile valley. Two or three poplar