Identifier: greaterbritainre01dilk (find matches)
Title: Greater Britain: a record of travel in English-speaking countries during 1866 and 1867
Year: 1869 (1860s)
Authors: Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir, 1843-1911
Subjects: Voyages around the world
Publisher: New York, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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es in full bloom, while onevery road-side bank the gorse blazed in its coat of yellow:there was, too, to me, a singular charm in the bright greenturf, after the tawny grass of California! Without making a long halt, I started for the South Island,first steaming across Cooks Straits, and up Queen CharlotteSound to Picton, and then through the French Pass—a narrowpassage filled with fearful whirlpools—to Nelson, a gem-likelittle Cornish village. After a days cattle-branding withan old college friend at his farm in the valley of the Maitai, Isailed again for the south, laying for a night in Massacre Bayto avoid the worst of a tremendous gale, and then coastingdown to the Buller and Hokitika—the new gold-fields of thecolonies. CHAPTER II. HOKITIKA. Placed in the very track of storms, and opened to thesweep of rolling seas from every quarter, exposed to wavesthat run from pole to pole, or from South Africa to CapeHorn, the shores of New Zealand are famed for swell and 160 )?0 172 174
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1681,.Gr 170 172 17* 176 J78 HOKITIKA. 285 surf, and her western rivers for the danger of their bars. In-surances at Melbourne are five times as high for the voyageto Hokitika as for the longer cruise to Brisbane. In our little steamer of a hundred tons, built to cross thebars, we had reached the mouth of the Hokitika River soonafter dark, but lay all night some ten miles to the south-westof the port. As we steamed in the early morning from ouranchorage, there rose up on the east the finest sunrise viewon which it has been my fortune to set eyes. A hundred miles of the Southern Alps stood out upon apale-blue sky in curves of a gloomy white that were just be-ginning to blush with pink, but ended to the southward in acone of fire that stood up from the ocean: it was the snow-dome of Mount Cook struck by the rising sun. The ever^green bush, flaming with the crimson of the rata-blooms,hung upon the mountain-side, and covered the plain to thevery margin of the narrow sands with a dense jun

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