Placed in the very track of storms, and open to the sweep of rolling seas from every quarter, exposed to waves that run from pole to pole, or from South Africa, to Cape Horn, the shores of New Zealand are famed for swell and surf, and her western rivers for the danger of their bars. Insurances at Melbourne are five times as high for the voyage to Hokitika as for the longer cruise to Brisbane. In our little steamer of a hundred tons, built to cross the bars, we had reached the mouth of the Hokitika River soon after dark, but lay all night some ten miles to the southwest of the port. As we steamed in the early morning from our anchorage, there rose up on the east the finest sunrise view on which it has been my fortune to set eyes. [Illustration: NEW ZEALAND] A hundred miles of the Southern Alps stood out upon a pale-blue sky in curves of a gloomy white that were just beginning to blush with pink, but ended to the southward in a cone of fire that stood up from the ocean: it was the snow-dome of Mount Cook struck by the rising sun. The evergreen bush, flaming with the crimson of the rata-blooms, hung upon the mountain-side, and covered the plain to the very margin of the narrow sands with a dense jungle. It was one of those sights that haunt men for years, like the eyes of Mary in Bellini‘s Milan picture. On the bar, three ranks of waves appeared to stand fixed in walls of surf. These huge rollers are sad destroyers of the New Zealand coasting ships: a steamer was lost here a week before my visit, and the harbormaster‘s whale-boat dashed in pieces, and two men drowned. Lashing everything that was on deck, and battening down the hatches in case we should ground in crossing, we prepared to run the gauntlet. The steamers often ground for an instant while in the trough between the waves, and the second sea, pooping them, sweeps them from end to end, but carries them into the still water. Watching our time, we were borne on a great rolling white-capped wave into the quiet lakelet that forms the harbor, just as the sun, coming slowly up behind the range, was firing the Alps from north to south; but it was not till we had lain some minutes at the wharf that the sun rose to us poor mortals of the sea and plain. Hokitika Bay is strangely like the lower portion of the Lago Maggiore, but Mount Rosa is inferior to Mount Cook. As I walked up from the quay to the town, looking for the “Empire” Hotel, which I had heard was the best in Hokitika, I spied a boy carrying a bundle of some newspaper. It was the early edition for the up-country coaches, but I asked if he could spare me a copy. He put one into my hand. “How much?” I asked. “A snapper.” “A snapper?” “Ay--a tizzy.” Understanding this more familiar term, I gave him a shilling. Instead of “change,” he cocked up his knee, slapt the shilling down on it, and said “Cry!” I accordingly cried “Woman!” and won, he loyally returning the coin, and walking off minus a paper.