pleasure by my descriptions that the actual witnessing of the scenery itself has given me, then I feel that I am repaid for all my scribe labour; and possibly, if I have been the means of exciting a desire to behold for one's self the wonders of Maoriland, I will reap a rich reward of kindly benediction by-and-by, I am sure, from travellers who may follow my footsteps, checking my accuracy and sharing in my delight.
We had a rough, nasty passage to Tasmania. The bounding billows of the South Pacific belie their name; and the peristaltic motion they impart to the diaphragm begets tendencies the very reverse of pacific. "The vasty deep" in these southern regions gets very much mixed and tumbled up, in the winter months, and the accompaniment to the cheerful whistling of the merry winds in the rigging, was a series of groanings almost too deep for utterance in the cabins below. We were glad when the bold coast of Tasmania hove in sight. Cape Pillar was the first promontory to greet us. Certes, how the icy blasts shrilly piped their roundelay. The spray from the cut-water hissed past us as we stood on the poop, and made the skin tingle, as from the lash of a whip. As we got abreast of Port Arthur, the scene of horrors and cruelties and iniquities of demoniac intensity in the old convict times, the elements quieted down somewhat, and we were able to enjoy the varied panorama that rapidly unfolded itself before us as we sped swiftly along.
Dense forests clothe the country from the far-off inland hills down to the cliffs that guard the
