Page:Through South Westland.djvu/96

40 in a jolly little lagoon,” and I found he must have bathed with the shark!

Strange visitors do come to these shores at times, and some months after this a whale, eighty-seven feet long, was washed ashore. The monster was as high as a cottage—the flukes alone being fifteen feet long. Eventually it was bought by public subscription, the soft parts dug away, and the skeleton dispatched to the Christchurch museum. The accounts of that whale’s adventures would make a story in itself. Next day we started for the Waiho gorge, I being driven in the harbourmaster’s trap, his lad riding Tom, and the blacksmith’s daughter, mounted on a handsome little chestnut, joining the party. We stopped at her father’s some ten miles further on, where we left the horses to be shod, I driving on in front to the accommodation-house, known as Batson’s, at the entrance to the Waiho gorge.