The precipices enclosing the Sounds rise in some cases five or six thousand feet from the water’s edge, their tops are snow-clad, and great waterfalls thunder into the calm sea-inlets below. The most famous fiord is Milford Sound, where is the great Bowen Fall. So thick is the vegetation that one fallen tree was pointed out to us on which we were assured that 500 different specimens of ferns, creepers, etc., might be counted. We had no time to verify this statement, but a hasty inspection made it seem not at all impossible. One thing is certain—the mountain-side with its impenetrable forest descends so precipitously into the waters below that our yacht of 500 tons was tied up to an overhanging tree and had no need to cast anchor. I think that there are seventeen Sounds in all (I do not mean that we saw so many), but Milford Sound is the only one which could be reached from the land, and even that was, in our time, a matter of great difficulty. For a long time the only inhabitant had been a man called Sutherland, who was considered a hermit and periodically supplied with food. He had discovered about fourteen miles inland the great Sutherland waterfall, which is much higher than Niagara though not nearly so broad.
THE NEW ZEALAND SOUNDS
When we were in Milford Sound we found a small band of convicts who had been lately established there for the purpose of making a road to the Fall. I do not think that they were working very hard, but they had cleared about two miles of footpath through the thicket along which we walked, and a lovely walk it was. Tea at the end, however, was considerably disturbed by sandflies which came round us in a perfect cloud, so that we could only push our cups up under our veils.
New Zealand sandflies are a peculiarly virulent species—a large blister rises directly they bite you, but they have the saving grace that they stop the moment the sun sets. They were, however, the only drawback to this most delightful of trips. While we were fighting them my brother and Lord Onslow’s A.D.C., Captain Guthrie, tried to push on to the Fall. As far as I remember, they got a distant view but had not time to reach it.[1]
Lord Onslow was a most considerate nautical host. We cruised from Sound to Sound by night as a rule, so that we might lie prostrate and asleep on the rough waves which are apt to surround those shores, and during the day we enjoyed the calm waters of the fiord.
We parted from the yacht and from our kind hosts with regret, having arranged to be again their guests at Wellington. Meantime we saw something of the South Island, which, by the way, bears the alternative name of Middle Island. New Zealand is really composed of three islands—North Island, the South or Middle Island, and a little one at the foot named Stewart Island. New Zealand claims dominion over a large number of small islands in the Pacific, to which happily two of the Samoan group over which it exercises a “mandate” have been added since the war. Lord Onslow told us that shortly before our visit he had been to settle the claims of certain rival Queens of Raratonga, one of these dependencies. Having decided in favour of one of these royal ladies, he endowed her with a sundial, as a sign of supremacy, as he thought she could well assert herself by “setting the time of day.” The South Island is full of beauty. We went in a steamer up Lake Wakatipu. I cannot attempt a description of all the charms of this lake and its neighbourhood. Naturally it differed from the Italian Lakes in the absence of picturesque villages (now, by the way, almost swallowed up by the rows of villas which skirt Como and Maggiore), but on the other hand there was the fascination of radiant nature little touched by the hand of man. Probably now there is a happy and growing population near Lake Wakatipu.
Before we left South Island we stayed for a night or two with my cousin, Edmund Parker, a member of Dalgetty’s firm, who then lived at Christchurch. It is curious that whereas Dunedin owed its origin to the Scotch Free Kirk, Christchurch, founded two years later, was a child of the “Canterbury Association,” which, under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Lyttelton, and others, sent out a body of settlers largely drawn from Oxford and strictly members of the Church of England. They took up a tract of land and sold it in portions, devoting ten shillings out of every pound received to church and schools; their city was named Christchurch after the Cathedral and College in Oxford, and the surrounding district bears the name of Canterbury. It stands upon the river Avon, the banks of which are planted with willows said to have been originally brought from Napoleon’s Tomb at St. Helena. There is a fine cathedral copied from Caen Cathedral in Normandy, and the whole place recalls some city of the Old World transplanted to a newer and brighter land.
The story goes that some of the original settlers, importing classics into agriculture, “swore at their oxen in Greek”—perhaps someone who heard them quoting Virgil’s Georgics took any foreign tongue for Greek oaths.
HOT SPRINGS OF NEW ZEALAND
After crossing to Wellington and spending a day or two with the Onslows there, we set off again to visit the famous hot-lake district in the Northern Island. Our headquarters were at Rotorua and Whakarewarewa, from both of which we visited the marvellous geysers, springs, and hot lakes with which the district abounds.