Whatever may be said--and a great deal may be said--against the tohunga as the foe of healing and knowledge, the religious prophets who from time to time rise among the Maori are not always entirely bad influences. A certain Rua, who just now commands belief among his countrymen, has managed to induce a following to found a well-built village on a hill-side among the forests of the Uriwera country. There, attended by several wives, he inhabits a comfortable house. Hard by rises a large circular temple, a wonderful effort of his native workmen. He has power enough to prohibit tobacco and alcohol in his settlement, to enforce sanitary rules, and to make his disciples clear and cultivate a large farm. Except that he forbids children from going to school, he does not appear to set himself against the Government. He poses, I understand, as a successor of Christ, and is supposed to be able to walk on the surface of water. His followers were anxious for ocular proof of this, and a hint of their desire was conveyed to the prophet. He assembled them on a river’s bank and gravely inquired, “Do you all from your hearts believe that I can walk on that water?” “We do,” was the response. “Then it is not necessary for me to do it,” said he, and walked composedly back to his hut. CHAPTER VI ALP, FIORD, AND SANCTUARY [Illustration: THE WAIRAU GORGE] In one way the south-western is the most enjoyable division of picturesque New Zealand. There is little here to regret or fear for. Unlike the beauty of the northern forests, here is a grandeur that will not pass away. Even in the thermal zone you are haunted by the memory of the lost terraces; but among the alps and fiords of the south-west Nature sits very strongly entrenched. From the Buller Gorge to Puysegur Point, and from Lake Menzies to Lake Hau-roto, both the climate and the lie of the land combine to keep man’s destructiveness at bay. Longitudinal ridges seam this territory from north to south--not a single dividing chain, but half-a-dozen ranges, lofty, steep, and entangled. Rivers thread every valley, and are the swiftest, coldest, and most dangerous of that treacherous race, the mountain torrents of our islands. On the eastern and drier side, settlement can do little to spoil the impressiveness of the mountains; for the great landscapes--at any rate north of Lake Hawea--usually begin at or near the snow-line. The edge of this is several thousand feet lower than in Switzerland. Below it comes a zone sometimes dotted with beech-woods, monotonous and seldom very high, but beautiful in their vesture of grey-green lichen, and carpeted with green and golden moss, often deep and not always soaked and slimy underneath. Or in the open the sub-alpine zone is redeemed by an abundance of ground-flowers such as our lower country cannot show. For this is the home of the deep, bowl-shaped buttercup called the shepherd’s lily, of mountain-daisies