the forest some way north of Hokitika, and are said to have murdered foully some thirty diggers for the sake of their gold. Yes, a beautiful place to look at from this deck, but … I give you two years there at the most."
"Many more," I said, "if I am to do the work there as I intend; I haven't come all the way from England for merely two years; it's true, I believe, that the word 'Hokitika' means, 'When you get there, turn back again,' as the Maoris regard it as the end of the earth, and hold that the souls of the dying flit from this shore; but I am going to make a home there for some time." "I don't envy you," he said, as our vessel weighed anchor, going northward to Wellington, and I watched Mt. Cook's icy peak till it was only a tiny splinter on the horizon.
Oct. 15. Hokitika. Two days' coaching brought me here, after a journey and road which deserve a better pen than mine to describe its magnificent variety and beauty. Five a.m., so as to start at six, with twelve hours of it for two days, is the order of the day. The coach,—dismiss all visions of the "Vivid" or the "Rocket," surviving still in Scotland and Wales, and imagine an American "notion," invented by one Cobb, immortalized throughout Australia and New Zealand by "Cobb's Coach";—clumsy in appearance, but capable of negotiating the roughest road and fording the worst rivers. On a strongly built bed and wheels, a sort of roofed van, open at the sides, is suspended fore and aft on thick leather bands, which allow it to swing freely in every direction; a very powerful brake, worked on both sides of the box by hand and foot, enables the driver to put on such pressure that he can hold his coach standing
