a patchy undergrowth of stunted bushes maintains a precarious foothold. In one ravine, the smoke from a bush-fire rolls lazily up in murky columns, till the gale, catching it as it emerges from the shelter of the gully, whirls it abroad, amid the dashing spray and driving rain. Truly a wild, forbidding, tempestuous coast. And what awful tragedies have been enacted here in the grim past! The red earth looks ominous. It suggests bloodshed. I had pictured something greener and fresher-looking. This is not one whit less sombre than the ordinary Australian coast, with its eternal fringe of neutral-tinted eucalyptus scrub.
Rounding the Cape we get under the lee of the island. The steamer glides into a blessed calm, and wan figures begin to emerge from
and soon we sight Stephenson Island, with its isolated masses of upstanding rock jutting out into the sea.
Behind this island lies the harbour of Whangaroa, once a noisy, lawless whaling-station. Only the other day an enormous whale, which had been harpooned in the Bay of Islands, far to the south, was secured by the natives in the harbour, and the sale of the carcase, or rather the products therefrom, realized 1000l. The port is now, however, quiet enough. The old whalers lie idly rotting in Auckland or Hobart harbours. The roving, rollicking Jackey Tars belong to Seamen's Unions now-a-days; own suburban allotments or steam-
