Page:Through South Westland.djvu/73

Rh much lay behind that little story; but it was only one among many—the common lot of a pioneer’s wife.

Far south it is even more isolated—only this generation has been born and brought up on the Coast. The old generation came from another world. There is a certain sense forced upon one of the smallness and feebleness of man, when brought face to face with the Forest—when from some hill-top you look out over that undulating sea of green-blue hills and valleys, all untrodden, all impenetrable, wherein is no open track or glade save only up the bed of a torrent. Then it is borne in on the mind how easily one could be lost—“swallowed in vastness, lost in silence, drowned in the deeps of a meaningless past.”

About mid-day we were crossing Mount Hercules. From its summit we gazed out over the wide flat of the Wataroa; miles and miles of rolling country—part yellow plain, part billowy forest—spread like a map at our feet. The Main South Road descended here in loops across the face of a mighty bluff—down, down; one side of the road was fringed by the tops of the tallest trees below, the other was overhung by crags with clinging trees and ferns. At last we got to the bottom. A fairly straight road ran between dykes and tall marsh-grass, where the red-legged pukakis rose and flapped away, their blue-black plumage shining in the sun. Mile after mile we travelled onwards,