Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

G06 HORSKS KAURI PINE. DcC. with them, had other duties allowed of following my own incli- nation. Riding across a valley close to Waimate, we passed some young horses of a good breed, though fitter for the saddle than for agricultural purposes. They were the produce of mares brought from Sydney. A picturesque wooden bridge, which had been thrown across the stream at the bottom of the valley, reminded me strongly of one well-known in England ; and caused that rush of associated ideas sure to follow an unexpected meeting with the semblance of an object familiar in other days. In a large wood I saw the noble cowrie (kauri) pine. The trunk of this gigantic offspring of New Zealand is in size and shape like an immense antique column. From the ground to the lower branches, more than ninety feet have been mea- sured ; and around the trunk, at a yard from the ground, more than forty feet ; while thirty feet in circumference is not an uncommon size. But the upper portions are comparatively meagre, and utterly devoid of any of the beauties so remark- able in our English oaks, cedars, and firs. The woods of New Zealand have rather a naked appearance ; for the branches seem inclined to grow upwards instead of spreading, or fea- thering. Cantering along, across an open easy country, passable for wheel carriages, we soon approached Keri-keri. A deep ravine, into which a considerable stream falls over a precipice about a hundred feet in height, was pointed out to me as the limit of an arm of the sea which penetrates from the Bay of Islands. The waterfall is rather picturesque. Passing on over rounded hills covered with fern, I almost started at a thoroughly English scene suddenly exposed. In the valley beneath, a quiet little village ; a church-like building of stone, with a clock on the tower ; an English cutter at anchor, with her ensign flying, in the arm of the sea before-mentioned, close to the village ; gardens full of flowers, surrounding the neatly- built and white- washed cottages ; cattle grazing about the sur- rounding hills ; and a whole school of little English children, hallooing and screaming to one another as they played in a