I consider these enough to account for even a larger body of water than is found in the Rangitata, and have not the smallest intention of going higher up the river to look for country.

My river bed flows into the main stream of the Rangitata, a good way lower down; on either side of it rise high mountains the spurs and abutments of the great range; from these again descend into my river bed numerous streams, each through a grassy valley, the upper part of which is bare and shingly, and is now (June 28) covered with snow, though a good deal less thickly than I could have expected. The largest of these tributary streams flows into the river bed, from the eastern side, about eight miles up it; and at the confluence of the two streams I have built my hut. A beautiful wood, large, but not too large, clothes a portion of the lower side of the mountains close down to the junction of two streams, affording alike shelter, and fire-wood, and timber: the mountains embosom my hut upon all sides, save that the open valley in front allows me the full benefit of the whole day's sun, or nearly so. The climate of New Zealand is notoriously windy, but so sheltered and secluded is this spot, that I have scarcely had a breath of wind ever since I have been up there; though on getting down to the main valley of the Rangitata, I have generally found it blowing up or down (chiefly down) the river bed with great violence: from the terrace just above my hut, I can see a small triangular patch of the Rangitata in the distance, and have often noticed the clouds of sand blowing down the river when no air is stirring at my own. place the wind blows up and down the main river, and does not reach up my river bed, for above three or four miles. Thus whether, there be a sou'-wester blowing, or a nor'wester, if I feel either at all, they come from the north.

east.

I have about five thousand acres up this valley, and about ten or twelve thousand more adjoining it, but divided from it by a mountain ridge, with three or four good high passes over it. People meet me whenever I come down to church, and ask me if I am frozen out yet, and pity me for having buried myself, as they call it, in such an out-of-the-way place: all I can tell them is, that I have not had a flake of snow yet; that whenever I go down to my neighbours' fire, and twenty miles off, I find that they have been having much colder and more unpleasant weather than myself; that the rain I have alluded to above, was alike felt and alike commented upon all over the plains and back country, and considered everywhere to have been some of the vilest weather known in the

settlement; and that the very people who most profess to pity me, are those who were laughed at in exactly the same manner themselves for taking up the country adjoining my own, than which nothing can have turned out better, and that in my opinion their pity is principally dictated by a regret that, as they were about it, they did not go a little further, and get the country of which I am now only too well content to call myself the possessor. A few years hence, when people have taken up the glaciers beyond me, I am sure I shall find myself doing exactly the same thing; so invariably has it happened here that even the most despised country has turned out well; and so many cases have there been of people taking up country, and then absolutely refusing to have anything to do with it, and of others quietly stepping into it free gratis, and for nothing, and selling it at the rate of one hundred pounds for the thousand acres, the novel price paid for country, that. I have not the smallest doubt that after I have completed my stay here during the winter, finished the house, brought a dray up, and put up a yard or two, I may be a thousand pounds in pocket, the reward of my adventures. But I most emphatically express my belief that there is no more available country left in this province untaken up. It may appear absurd to suppose myself the last fortunate individual who has succeeded in procuring country without buying it; but I must urge that I have followed up the Hurunui, the Waimakirivi, the Rakaia, and the Rangitata, and have only been successful in the case of the last-named river; that the Waitangi, the largest of all, is notoriously explored, and that much more country has been taken up in that district than actually exists, and that I should go on exploring myself, were I not strongly of opinion that I should make nothing by my motion.

True-the west coast remains, the tower in which the slumbering princess lies, whom none can rescue but the fated prince-but we know that the great Alpine range descends almost perpendicularly into the sea, upon that side the island, and that its sides are covered with dense impenetrable forests of primeval growth. Here and there at the mouths of the rivers a few flats may exist, or rather do exist; but over these rolls upwards to the snow line a heaving mass of timber. I do not say but that my own curiosity concerning the west coast is excited, and that I do not, if all is well, intend to verify or disprove the reports of others with my own eyes; but I have little

faith in the success of the undertaking, and should go more as a traveller and an explorer, than as intending to make any money by the expedition.

I have yet much to write:-I should like to describe the general features of the New Zealand rivers, or rather of the Canterbury rivers, the remarkable nor'-west winds, the south-west winds, the character of the plains, and the peculiarities of the inhabitants; but, for the present, I have trespassed sufficiently upon the patience of the reader.

Flax and cabbage trees belong more to the front country; they are not so characteristic of the back: the forests too, upon the front side of the mountains, are well worthy of a description, but these things I will reserve for the present. The departure of the mail is at hand, and I must arise from my stone in my V-hut, and take these papers down to Christ Church. Let the reader be set to write under similar circumstances, occasionally getting up to turn a damper, or to assist in carrying a heavy log of timber from the bush to the scene of the building operations, and he might perhaps write English neither better nor more coherent than I have done. On these grounds, claiming his indulgence for the present, I bid him a hearty farewell.

i

PHILOCTETES IN LEMNOS.

AGAIN the day is dying down the west
And I yet here, and thus nine summer times
Have pass'd, with nine harsh winters, and again
The tenth spring-tide hath found me still alone,
And tortured with this ever-growing wound
Which day by day consumes me; woe is me!

O mighty cliffs, O dark steep rocks, O seas
That ever plunge and roar upon the coasts
Of this wild isle, O listen to my voice,
For thro' these years of suffering ye have been
My sole companions, hear my tale of wrongs!
Would I had never left my native hills
To join in Aulis them that went to Troy,
Or that the snake whose poison caused this wound
Had slain me, so the crafty, cruel kings
Had never seized me as amid the camp
Helpless I lay and groaning, nor the ship
Had brought me hither, leaving me to die.

O mountains, how ye echoed to my cries
When from my sleep awaking, while the night
Was filling silently the sky with stars,

I saw no vessel in the heaving bay,

Nor heard or voice or sound, save faint and low,
The breakers dying on the yellow sand;

And loud I cried " Odysseus," and the rocks
Mocked me, and cried "Odysseus" far away
Until my voice was weary, and I sat
Hopeless as some poor shipwreck'd mariner
Who waking from his stupor on the sands

Where the great waves have cast him, sees the cliffs
Piled round him, so that there is no escape,
And feels death creeping nearer in each wave.
But when at last the slowly-moving morn
Was risen, in the cave I found my bow
And these famed arrows, which from day to day
Have slain me bird or beast to serve my need;

And, dragging on this wounded foot with pain,
I gather broken wood and fallen leaves
Wherewith to feed the fire that from the flints
I force with labour, and the dewy spring
Here by the cave supplies my thirst, tho' oft
Frozen, when winter strips this sea-girt isle.
And thus I live, if to exist in pain

Be life, and whether parch'd by summer noons
When all the shore lies steaming in the sun,
Or drench'd with dews that fall on summer nights,
I lie exposed; and all the winter long

The harsh frost bites me, and I hear from far,
From the dark hollows, voices of the wolves
Ring to the keen-eyed stars: woe, woe is me!
Yet, when from west to east the setting sun
Bridges with golden light the purple seas,
And airs blow cool about me, sometimes comes
Some little calmness o'er me as I sit
And watch the sea-gull sporting on the wave,
And, high amid the rosy-tinted air,

The eagle sailing towards his rocky home.
I hear in spirit, dying far away,

The torrent streams of Eta, and behold
The snowy peaks, the hollows of the hills,
And the green meadows, haunt of grazing herds
Thro' which Spercheius wanders to the sea,-
My ancient home-and there methinks I see
My father coming homeward from the chase
With all his dogs about him, and the youths,
Their weapons gleaming in the falling dew.
O is he yet alive, or does he lie
Sepulchred with his fathers? for whene'er
A ship hath chanced to touch upon this isle,
I have besought the mariners with tears
To tell him of my lot, that he might send
And fetch me, but no ship hath ever come,
And so I fear that all who loved me there
Are with their fathers; would that I might lie
Among them, but my bones, alas! the sport
Of every wind and wave, when all the birds
Have feasted off them, on these sands must bleach
Unburied, and unwet with any tears.

O often, as in dreams, I seem to hear
The din of battle, and I long to know
How fares the war, and if it rages still
Beside the reedy banks of Simois,

Or up divine Scamander's whirling stream,
And on the lotos-bearing meads that stretch