Summer in Pelorus

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 71, 17 December 1917, Page 12

Summer in Pelorus

VOICES OF THE J j» J WILDERNESS

(15V JjADUA BUXTIXO)

"Hush, how it swells and swells Still sweet and low and sad-as tho' the iical Wore cliiiucd in forest depths where never Meal Sounds from tho world beyond, or where no iioise Breaks ever tho lons dream." , -iTlio liell-Birda, from "The Human inheritance") Summer lime! And oven in tin smothering (•ouimorcitili.sm and aitifici ality of a city that loves with an ox cording great lovo tho obvious and tin banal, tho call of the hills and tin bush and tho sea, with their promisi of untrammelled freedom, of life undo; tho o[)oii sky, makes itself felt witl an insistent, not-to-bo denied power Itvoi-y Heeling, changing hue or tn< shadowy veil with which tho hills haw enwrapped themselves, like a. womai who knows the alluro of beauty bit I half revealed, of mystery but half w\clerstood; every restless murmur of tin sen as it breaks upon the shimmering sands; every tremble, every whispei of grass, tree, and flower lays its spel upon jaded mind and body until lift holds no savour uuless that desire is fulfilled. It is not strange that ono of th< places to which some people rettirr year after year to spend thoir briel time of summer freedom is to tin Queen Charlotte or Pelorus Sounds Picton. charming little township thai it is, is but the stepping-stono fron which they disappear for weeks (if thej are lucky) into tho maze that lead; them into a remote, peaceful work that has no kinship with the life thoj left behind them. Jade-green waterways that vvind interminably into secret recesses among tho hills, guarded bj islands and promontories that look like nothing so much as strange crouchinp pre-historic monsters on whom a spell has been cast for their wickedness, arc travorsed, and each of the endless little bays which are passed have their settlements or farmhouses nestling at the foot of the wooded hills, and their

accommodation-houses for the stranger at tho gate—Mahau, Homewood, tlio Portago, Grail Bay, Maniaroa—which at this timo of tho year are the haunt of many visitors. Probably tho ideal way of spending a holiday in tho Sounds is to have one's own yacht, and to go where tho wind and one's own heart listeth, but as yachts are blessings reserved only for a- few (who sometimes refuso to regard them as blessings) most people have to content themselves with staying at one of tho accommodation houses and there do as tho desire moves them in the mattor of providing their own entertainment.

Naturally enjoyment wears a different guise to every individual, but most hale and hearty persons appear to find common ground for pleasure in launching, fishing, and endless expeditions among tho hills and bays; shooting, also, in the caso of men (but every man who shoots the bush birds should be hung without morcy). Long days are spent upon tho wator in fishing excursions, and usually big harvests of fish are brought back by scarletfaced, more or less blistered but happy individuals, and tho household generally is extremely well pleased to ho regaled with their spoils for breakfast tho following morning. To strangers it would seem the easiest tiling in tho world to lose oneself among those winding waterways that open out so endlessly and in such different directions into one another from every point of tho compass, the more so in that there is sometimes a similarity of outline. But only the stranger wonld feel this doubt and perplexity, as tho people who live in these remoto spots are as familiar with the passages as they are with their daily tasks at the farmhouses. And oven the least energetic man or woman need hardly spend one moment of the long summer days other than in the open air either underneath the trees close to tho water's edac or in the bush that covers the hillside. Either practice is delightful, and mind-healing as well as hody-healing, and again one _is amazed at the life-giving powers which the old Earth-Mother pours into those of her children who como close to her for rest and comfort.

Lovers of colour would find the Sounds at once their joy and the cause of tlioir frenzied despair, as tho incossantly changing hues of water and distant hills arc untranslatable. No brush could catch and retain tha exquisite blues that shimmer and sparklo every moment of the day-long sunshine, and at evening change into a translucent, unfathomable, jado-green mystery, homo of all the strange half-dcmoniao beings that peopled the minds of the imaginative Maoris of olden times. No wonder'that for them tho Underworld had its home in tho depths of the sea, or that tho Sounds abound with Maori legends and fables. And tho bush! What can bo said of its wild riot of strength and vitality, of the unseen host of living things that hide in its green mystorious bosom? Much has been destroyed on many of tho hillsides, but on others great areas of it, as at Crail I3ny, have been preserved. There is very little level land in tho Sounds, so that tho bush, where it has been saved, covers the hillsides with a growth ot centuries —how many none can tell. Tane, tho old Tree-God, still hovers unseen in his forest fastnesses, still communes with his children the trees, still breathes his great life-giving currents into them, so that to enter the forest is to enter into a very living presence and power. Andat midday, when the world outside is swooning with heat, it is cool and sweet and fragrant in the bush. How fragrant with the pungent scented breath of earth and moss and loaf only the bush-lover can toll. And out of the heart of the silence and solitude thero somotimes falls an elfin chime, sweeter, clearer, and moro musical than any ever mado by human agency—the chime of the' hell-bird. It is such music as even Pan, hushing his own wild pipes meanwhile, must needs stay to bear. Exquisite, remote, it steals upon the ear like a call from that oKin laud of dreams and desires from which wo arc forever haunted wanderers sinco wo have ceased tn be children, ceased, alas! to bo dreamers. It is tho soul of tho bush expressed in nmsis.

Yot neither sea, nor mountains, nor bush have held off tho long arm, of war, that arm that has stretched into evorv corner of tho earth and beckoned for the bravest and tho best. Lnn;; before conscription camn in brownfaced bids from the homesteads had listened to the voice that raiiji through overy freedom-loving land, and many had' hastened to join the standard whose ('lory i.s as a living flame for all time to come. And the hills who R.ivo these lads their quiet steadfastness of purpose, and tho sea whose blue waters their lithe young bodies so often cleft, and who pave to them their untrammelled freedom of soul, know that all is well. "The groat Wind of the World has blown noon tho Tree of Life- and the Leaves are. thickly falthm." It'.l. I|w 'inu» l.iv! f"«:vorl