We have a good distance to go, for the Member's place is fully twenty miles off; but we have plenty of rowers, and have wind as well as tide in our favour. Locomotion by water being our customary means of getting about, we think nothing of the distance, and get over it in fair time.
The Member's place is a very different style of thing to ours. He has been some years longer here than we have on the Pahi; and has had plenty of means to enable him to do as he liked. In former times some of us worked for him, and we are all very good friends. But it is a year or two since most of us visited here, and so we are much struck with the improvement that has been effected since we last saw the place.
To begin with, we land upon a little wharf or causeway of planks laid upon piles, which runs out over the mud to low-water mark, and enables people to land or embark at any time, without struggling through the mud first of all. For, on all these rivers, mud is the general rule. Shingle and sand appear in places, and there is often a belt of either above high-water mark; but below that, and as far as the ebb recedes, is almost invariably a stretch of greenish-grey sticky ooze. It is in this that the mangroves flourish, and it contains the shell-fish which the Maoris largely eat. Our boats are usually built flat-bottomed, so that they may be readily hauled up from, or shoved down to the water on the slippery surface of the mud, as may be required.
The Member's house stands close to the beach, but on a little elevation just above it. It is placed in an irregularly shaped basin, that opens out upon the river. Round the basin run low ranges, covered still with their original bush. But all the undulating extent between them and the river, some seven hundred acres or so, is under grass or cultivation. It is all enclosed with a boundary fence of strong pig-proof post-and-rail, and divided off by well cared for hedges, or wire fences. There are other and newer clearings beyond the ranges and out of sight, but here all that is visible is very much trimmer and neater in appearance than our farm.
Over three parts of the basin the plough has passed. About one-half is under wheat, maize, and other crops, while the grass on the remainder looks wonderfully rich, freed as it is from stumps, drained, and, to a measurable extent, levelled. Cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs are feeding in the paddocks.
We eye the scene with great admiration, and even envy. This is the sort of thing our farm ought to be, and will be. It is what it might have been already, perhaps, if we had been capitalists. But then we weren't.
The Member has got beyond the stage where we are still stuck. He is scarcely a pioneer farmer any longer. He has made his home, and a beautiful home it is, though shut out, seemingly, from all the world beside. The ranges, dark with woods, sweep round the fertile fields, the river flows below, and beyond it the untouched virginity of forest is again picturesquely apparent.
But we are in a hurry to get up to the house, and so we walk at once from the landing-place. A well-made gravelled path leads up from the waterside, not straight to the house, which is rather to the right, but along a neat paling, which encloses the gardens round it. On the left is an orchard of some extent, within which we see a great many more fruit-trees than we possess ourselves; they have been grown with care, and the varied produce of that fruit-yard would be a mine of wealth in Covent Garden.
Beyond the orchard, which is divided from the path by a hedge of orange, lemon, and quince, cut down into a dense shrubbery, we catch a glimpse through the trees of several labourers' cottages, and some barns or wool-sheds. The path is shaded by an avenue of fine trees, very large considering how young they are. Among them may be seen English oaks and beeches, American maples and sumachs, Spanish chestnuts, Australian blue-gums, Chinese and Japanese trees and shrubs, tropic palms, and some of the indigenous ornaments of the bush.
A hundred yards up this avenue, and we pass to the right through a gate in the garden paling. There we find ourselves in enchanted ground, for there is surely no garden in the North, except, perhaps, that of the Horticultural Society at Auckland, which is superior to this. It is beautifully laid out, and to us, fresh from the uncouth barbarism of our shanty and its surroundings, this place seems to breathe of the "Arabian Nights." And is there not a certain princess within, into whose seraphic presence we are now entering? We inhale a new atmosphere, and tread lightly, almost on tiptoe, speaking unconsciously in whispers, and with the blood running quicker through our veins.