Well, having stepped in as dignified a manner as I knew how, from thwart to thwart, till I came to the bow of the boat, and having tightened on my hat and buttoned up my coat, I fairly mounted on the broad shoulders of my aboriginal friend. I felt at the time that the thing was a sort of failure--a come down; the position was not graceful, or in any way likely to suggest ideas of respect or awe, with my legs projecting a yard or so from under each arm of my bearer, holding on to his shoulders in the most painful, cramped, and awkward manner. To be sacked on shore thus, and delivered like a bag of goods thus, into the hands of the assembled multitude, did not strike me as a good first appearance on this stage. But little, indeed, can we tell in this world what one second may produce. Gentle reader, fair reader, patient reader! The fates have decreed it; the fiat has gone forth; on that man's back I shall never land in New Zealand. Manifold are the doubts and fears which have yet to shake and agitate the hearts and minds of all my friends as to whether I shall ever land at all, or ever again feel _terrâ firmâ_ touch my longing foot. My bearer made one step; the rock is slippery; backwards he goes; back, back! The steep is near--is passed! down, down, we go! backwards and headlong to the depths below! The ebb tide is running like a sluice; in an instant we are forty yards off, and a fathom below the surface; ten more fathoms are beneath us. The heels of my boots, my polished boots, point to the upper air--ay, point; but when, oh, when again, shall I salute thee, gentle air; when again, unchoked by the saline flood, cry _Veni aura_? When, indeed! for now I am wrong end uppermost, drifting away with the tide, and ballasted with heavy pistols, boots, tight clothes, and all the straps and strings of civilization. Oh, heavens! and oh earth! and oh ye little thieves of fishes who manage to live in the waters under the earth (a miserable sort of life you must have of it!) oh Maori sea nymphs! who, with yellow hair--yellow? egad--that's odd enough, to say the least of it; however the Maori should come to give their sea nymphs or spirits yellow hair is curious. The Maori know nothing about yellow hair; their hair is black. About one in a hundred of them have a sort of dirty-brown hair; but even if there should be now and then a native with yellow hair, how is it that they have come to give this colour to the sea-sprites in particular?--who also "dance on the sands, and yet no footstep seen." Now I confess I am rather puzzled and struck by the coincidence. I don't believe Shakespeare ever was in New Zealand; Jason might, being a seafaring-man, and if he should have called in for wood and water, and happened to have the golden fleece by any accident on board, and by any chance put it on for a wig, why the thing would be accounted for at once. The world is mad now-a-days about gold, so no one cares a fig about what is called "golden hair;"