Identifier: oceanaore00frou (find matches)
Title: Oceana : or, England and her colonies
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Froude, James Anthony, 1818-1894
Subjects: Great Britain--Colonies
Publisher: London : Longmans, Green, and Co.
Contributing Library: Virginia Beach Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

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the open water. The men rowed well, laughing andtalking among themselves, and carried us in little morethan an hour to a point eight miles distant. Little life ofany kind showed on the way; no boat was visible but ourown; there were a few cormorants, a few ducks, a coot ortwo, three or four seagulls, come from the ocean to catchsprats, and that was all. Kate said that the lake heldenormous eels as big round as a mans leg, which werecaught occasionally with night lines; but we saw nothingof them and did not entirely believe. At the point, orbehind it, we came on a Maori farm on the waters edge.There were boats, and nets hung up to dry, a maize-field,an orchard, and a cabin. We stopped, and they offered uscray-fish, which we declined, but bought a basket of applesfor the crew. We were now in an arm of the lake whichreached three miles further. At the head of this we landedby the mouth of a small rapid river, and looked about us.It was a pretty spot, overhung by precipitous cliffs, with
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LADY GUIDES TO THE TERRACES 28 ivy-fern climbing over them. A hot spring was bubblingviolently through a hole in a rock. The ground waslittered with the shells of unnumbered cray-fish which hadbeen boiled in this caldron of Natures providing. Herewe were joined by a native girl, Marileha by name, a bright-looking lass of eighteen, with merry eyes, and a thick but■^veil-combed mass of raven hair (shot with orange in thesunlight) which she tossed about over her shoulders. Onher back, thrown jauntily on, she had a shawl of feathers which E wanted to buy, but found the young lady coy. She was a friend of Kates, it appeared, was qualifying fora guide, and was to be our companion, we were told, throughthe day. I heard the news with some anxiety, for therewas said to be a delicious basin of lukewarm water on oneof the terraces, in which custom required us to bathe.Our two lady-guides would provide towels, and officiate, infact, as bathing women. The fair Polycasta had bathedTelemachus, and

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