Page:Through South Westland.djvu/92

38 daughter, and from its summit gazed southward. Blue headland beyond blue headland, wide beaches faintly violet stretching between them; mountains and clouds lying behind the sea haze—all mysterious, all unknown. Far down beyond that farthest headland, where perhaps the great Haast river ran, we meant to go.

Flowers grew along this track, fringing it delicately with mauve and purple. Dainty butterworts nodded their heads from their hair-like stems, and other flowers grew in sprays of blue with pink buds, which I took to be orchids—Thelymitra, perhaps.

Then we turned and looked back at Okarito. There it lay by its lagoon: a forgotten corner, once so full of life. Far away stretched reaches of grey and opal water, edged by violet hills; now and again a couple of black swans winged their way across the placid surface—they, and the tiny curls of smoke ascending into the still air, were the only signs of life.

My companion begged me to come to tea, saying her mother was from home, and she was in charge of the family. There were six younger than herself and she was but sixteen—thus do girls on the Coast learn to be women. As we sat over our tea, a visitor and her baby arrived, and I heard of the great disappointment the town had just sustained.

It seems the “Jane Douglas,” on her coasting trips, is sometimes delayed by the harbour bar, and has been shut in as long as two months at a time,