Brighter Britain! (Volume 2 of 2): or Settler and Maori in Northern New ZealandHay, W. Delisle (William Delisle)
History
Brighter Britain! (Volume 2 of 2): or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand
Hay, W. Delisle (William Delisle)
Ethnology -- New Zealand; Māori (New Zealand people); New Zealand -- Description and travel
The heavy bush, in these northern districts, is divisible into two
kinds. There is the kauri bush and the mixed bush. The first, as its
name implies, is forest where the kauri grows alone, or, at least,
preponderates. It has already been described. It is something solemn
and tremendous in the last degree, grand and gloomy, and even awful.
There are but few trees produced anywhere in the world that can
rival the mammoth kauri in bulk. When we consider the closeness with
which the trees stand, the uniform mightiness of their endless ranks,
stretching on over hill and dale for many a mile, it is not easy to say
where we may look to find anything to match or compare with kauri bush.
The mixed bush is very different. Here one is in an actual land of
enchantment. Uniformity is gone; unending variety is in place of it.
The eye is almost wearied with delight, wonder, and admiration at all
around, for there is ever something new, something to prevent the sense
of monotony growing up in the mind.
The trees are not of one size, any more than of one kind. Their
maximum girth and height fall considerably below that of the largest
kauri. Still, one may see kahikatea, kawaka, kotukutuku, matai, miro,
pukatea, puriri, rata, rimu, taraire, totara, and many another, whose
girth may be as much as thirty feet and more, perhaps; and that may
attain a hundred feet or more of height before "heading." Nor are these
trees but so many columns. There are trees that branch all round with
great domes of foliage. There are some that send several huge limbs
upshooting to the sky. There are crooked trees, gnarled trees, bare
trees and richly covered ones, leaning trees and fallen trees, a
confusion and profusion of arboreal forms.
There is exuberant vegetation above, around, below. Waist-deep in a
rich, rare fernery you stand, and, if you have an artistic soul, gaze
rapturously about you. From the heights you peer down into the gullies,
look abroad over distant sweeps of river, glance through vistas of
greenery, over panoramas of wild woodland beauty, carrying your sight
away to the far-off hills bathed in sunshine; and all is mantled with
the glorious woods.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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