Before we proceed on our way, the foppery of our charioteer reasserts itself. Of course, his neat and spruce trim has been considerably disarrayed, so now he proceeds to reorganize his appearance. Gravely and calmly he draws brushes and so on from a receptacle under the box-seat, and commences to titivate himself. This is too much. Laughter and jibes and energetic rebukes fall on him thick as hail. At first he pays no attention; then he says slowly-- "Look here! If any one wants to walk the rest of the way, he can do it. I'm willing to split fares for the half journey!" There is a covert threat in this, and as no one cares to quarrel with the speaker, his eccentricities are allowed to develop themselves without further interference. Then we resume our drive on to Helensville. For the most part the road passes through open country, but we now more frequently see scrub and bush in various directions. At one place, indeed, for about two miles, we pass through forest. The trees, mostly kahikatea, seem to our English eyes of stupendous proportions, but we are told they grow much bigger in many other parts. Signs of human life are not altogether wanting in these wilds. We pass a dray coming down from the Kaipara, laden with wool, and pull up, that Dandy Jack may have a private conversation with the driver of it. This dray is a huge waggon, built in a very strong and substantial style, and it is drawn by twelve span of bullocks. Here and there among the fern, usually in the bottom of a gully beside some patch of scrub, we have noticed little clusters of huts. These are not Maori whares, as we suppose at first, but are the temporary habitations of gum-diggers, a nomadic class who haunt the waste tracts where kauri-gum is to be found buried in the soil. In a few places we pass by solitary homesteads, looking very comfortable in the midst of their more or less cultivated paddocks and clearings. These are usually fixed on spots where the soil, for a space of a few hundred acres, happens to be of better quality than the gum-lands around. At most of these settlers' houses somebody is on the look-out for the coach, and there is a minute's halt to permit of the exchange of mails or news. For travellers along the road are very few in number, and the bi-weekly advent of the coach is an event of importance.