THE REV. DR STEPHENSON ON NEW ZEALAND.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 39, 1 March 1884, Page 7

THE REV. DR STEPHENSON ON NEW ZEALAND.

Tub Ho*'. Di Step'n>n*on, of London, who recently visited this colony, is ab present contributing to one o" tiiollomj pnpers .a series of articles entitled "Notes on Australasia." From one of these articles the following is taken : ; — •' I think f must confess to the opinion that, physically, New Zealand is the finest country on the face of the earth, it consists of two principal islands, with a cluster of subordinates around them, and stretches for about a thousand miles. It has a considerable variety of climate, but none that is trying or unpleasant. Yet there are in it the strangest combination of scenery and soil. Mountains rising to ten thousand feet high, crowned with perpetual snow, as glorious as any that Switzerland can boast ; lakes imprisoned by mighty hills, or embosomed in exquisite forests, as picturesque as Lucerne or Dorwontwater ; forests stretching through hundreds of miles, an immense variety of wood and loaf, and a bewildering, wealth of tendril and creeper. There is a volcanic region, in which the wonderful, tue grotesque, the horrible, and the beautiful are strangely mingled. And so, Now Zealand is a sort of compendium of the best that you can iiud in every part of tiie world. Besides, there are vast and rich plains, beeming to invite the plough of the husbandman, and mines stored with untold mineral wealth. Coal and iron, the strong foundations of commercial prosperity, are there in abundance ; anil the coast is indented Avitli harbours amongst the most spacious, safe, and beautiful that the world can boast. We could, however, only get a glimpse of thc-e beauties. . . . Leaving Auckland — a picture of beauty, with its most wonderful harbour — by the coasting steamer in the evening, we ai rived next morning at Tauranga, and then engaging a vehicle, drawn by four horses, we passed along a pleasant roa<l close by the Gate Pah, the scone uf one of the terrible butcheries of the Maori wars, and thence onward through an interesting forest region, until at the end of' forty miles, having passed one or two picturesque hues, we came to the village o Ohinemutn, on tue banks of the Lake liotorua. . . . Buc, most remarkable sight of all, a sight never to bo forgotten, were the wiiite and pink terraces. I have no hope of being aule to convey, without the ai . of illustrations, any idea of the exquisite beauty ut the terraces, or even of their s.upe, outline, and pecularities I had rend Tiollopc'^ descnption of tiiem, but the reality was so indue the expectation which I had lounued upon ms words, that 1 dare not hope an) words of mine would convey to otnor mm is a more exact idea. Some time after my vi- it L found in Mi is Gordon Cummmg's book on Fiji a description of these terraces, which approaches more nearly to success than anything 1 nave &een or anything I can hope to do. 1 have therefore compiessed into two or t .ree paragraphs her sketch | of them, and would refer to her work those wno are wishful to study them more fully. The terraces aio in nature what die Taj Mahal at Agra is in architecture, a thing indesciibable — a faiiy city of lace carved in pure marble ; a two'isand waterfalls suddenly frozen and fringed wita icicles. Perhaps you will best- picture it to yoruselves as a steep hillside, artificially terraced so as to i'oim hundreds of tiny lake" • but the stonework enclosing and sustaining each little lake is of white marble, fringed with stalactites jesenibling the most creamy-white coral, which grows more beautiful year by year, as the evertrickling water drips over it. fto rapid is the deposit that fern leaves and sticks which drop into the water are in a few days so thickly encrusted that they look like as if they ha 1 been ci3 r stalised by a confectioner ; and sometimes a dead bird falls in, and is apparently petrified, while its form is still quite preserved. The total height of the w.iite terraces is about one hundred and iil'ty feet, and the width at the base about three hundred feet ; but the amount of beauly of detail crowded into this space bailies description. While some ot the terraces are so deep ant\ bold as to suggest marble battlements of fairy citadels, others resemble gigantic clam-shells, filled to the brim with the exquisite blue water, sometimes tinged with violet, which as it drips from the lip of the shell, forms a deep fringe of the liveliest stalactites, generally pure white, kit sometimes tinged with other colours. Each great Siiell-like bath partly overhangs the one below it, so that in some the bat.'ier can find sheltei from the sun beneath this wonderful canopy with its dripping 1 gems. All the lovely forms ot frost crystals are here produced in enduring mat- rial. ... 1 have seen several of the most beautiful, sights the world has to snow ; the after-glow <J>n the Bornese Alps ; the Shreckhorfu, lifting its white walls for seven thousand feet r above the summit oTi the- Great Scheideck ; the thousand isles sleeping on the breast of the St.' Lawrence ; and Niagara, with its inexpressible beauty ; but, ranging with these great pictures, which can nover be sui passed till we see the city' of jasper ami gold, is my memory of the white terrace at Rotoniahaua."

A g-irl seven or eight years old slipped down the other day, and, m she piekofl herself up, aimm h..id, •• Dou'i cry, siawy. " lk Wliu'sMi>inM t0 ?" fliosharpely denuuidcd us who roso up; " I guess wh >na u'ii*' '^ ft'ot h'M* mothers shawl on «hV ain't toioL anybody know shu'o liu;'t?" .