THREE WEEKS ON THE GREAT BARRIER. (A. J. Vogan.)

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 361, 20 April 1889, Page 4

THREE WEEKS ON THE GREAT BARRIER. (A. J. Vogan.)

Thkeb weeks is not much in a man's life, it is true, bub to one whose soul inclines to botany, geology, and the like, and wh° delights in the picturesque, twenty-one days spent in such a little heaven as the above-mentioned " Summer iale, o£ Eden, lying In deep azure spheres of sea," will have a more or less beneficially leavening effect, I believe, on all his future. Man is the favourite child of nature ; and the more he admires her and learns of her, the more compliments she will bestow upon him in return, in the way of healthful mind and body. But to describe the island— first saying something of its human inhabitants. These muster some 320 head, and I find, jotted down in my journal amongst notes and sketches, the following words regarding their chief characteristics : " The Barrierites are very hospitable ; are pictures of health, and average more in weight, I should say, than the usual mainland •cookie.' They are also inclined to laziness. Prolific Nature has, in placing within their grasp such inexhaustible supplies of food, caused a habit to grow up amongst them of regarding time as of no importance, and the- morrow as of no account. The chief amusement is apparently gossip. This has become more than a relaxation— it has flourished into a science." The Barrier yarns, in their progress round the " tight little island," remind one of the Russian game of Truth, which the summer tourists used to sometimes indulge in at the -pensions along the Riviera. ,Of a circle of ladies and gentlemen, one would whisper some narrative to another, who in turn would pass it on in like manner. Having thus made the circle of the room, the original tale, having been written down for reference, is compared with that written by the last recipient of the same. The result is almost invariably a most laughable illustration of the proneness of the human brain to exaggerate and distort what ib receives from the external world. A Barrier yarn has the same kind of life, and many a " simple tale," I was informed, has so alteied in its passage, that, when it reached its starting point again, the artistic flourishes added to the " plain u n varnished , " made it appear to its origin ato r as a new " bit of gospip " to set rolling. It was the wettest of wet days when we started for the Barrier. Never did the lively little lona looic damper or more uninviting than she did that day, observed through sheets of angry rain, that beat upon her decks, as she panted her way down the harbour. Captain Amodeo, in his yellow oilskins, looked the only cheerful thing about, and by a strange attraction, that I have noticed before, he soon had all the passengers round him, listening to his plan for converting the Government House grounds into a dairy farm. However, a gloriously Turneresquo sunset glazes with rose-colour the purple-green ranges of the island a? we approach, and the rain leaving off, we glide into the beautiful harbour of Fitzroy under a combination of natural effects that render the scene most enchanting. The low cliffr, apparently^ composed of a coarse volcanic breccia, being irregularly worn away at the sea-line, are perforated with strange and rugged-mouthed caverns. Numerous masses of tree-covered rock appear above the dappled water of the harbour, and many of these through the denudation of their bases have become odly mushroom-shaped. Space will not let me attempt to describe the glories of the Man-o-War passage, _or the picturesque group of boats, with flourbag sails, and'still more picturesque crews, who gliding out from the dark shores, bought off honey, wool, etc., to us, for the Auckland market. Suffice it to say that leaving Fitzroy we call next at Blind Bay, where the little mail is delivered to an importaut official of the name of Watson: and la&tlv Tryphena, our destination, is reached and my companion, Mr H. Winklemann (a landowner on the Barrier), and myself are esconced in the hospitable house of Mr Bailey, one of the principal and oldest settlers on the island. The Great Barrier is essentially a volcanic island, extending a bush-covered length of twenty-two miles, north and south, about sixtvmiles N.E. of Auckland, in lat. 36deg.S Narrow, broken, and irregular ranges descend towards the coast from a common mountainous centre, consisting of a number of castle like eminences of volcanic origin, the highest of which is Mount Hobson : 2,300 feet above the sea. Some of the rocks exposed upon the coast by the action of the sea and weather are higher crystalline and compact ; but as a rule trachytic tufas, or rather the clays resulting from the decomposition of trachytic and feldspatic rocks, derived from the ranges above, form the main part of the island valley land. From Mr Charles Werner's store (the only one on the island) I paid two visits to a most remarkable rock formation, apparently similar to one I noticed lately near Matarangi, the new goldfield on Cape Colville. It consists of a tufaceous and highly silicious cinter, in which fine scoria is seen in stratified line in places. The summit of the hill upon which this deposit issituated is 1,400 ft. above the sea, and has been well christened the White Cliffs, the old Maori name Ahumata being retained only upon the survey maps. I cannot here explain my reasons, but I believe the white deposit, some 600 feet deep or more, was formed at the bottom of a crater-lake, probably of a high temperature, the surrounding walls of which washing away have left the white cliffs as we see them to-day. Prof. Hutton, the geologist, speaks of Ahumata as an old trachytic volcano, but as there is no evidence of this, and as I was informed he never actually was upon the mountain in question himself, he may have stated this upon insufficient evidence. Looking N.N.W. from the summit of Ahumata, across the Kaitoki River (called after the stone found therein from which the natives manufactured their axes), the visitor who knows where to look can see the location of two bunches of thermal springs at a distance from each other of about a mile. On the ranges by the Black Rock (further on in the same direction) some four or five miles, I saw evidence of numerous and extensive ancient thermal spring basins. Round the white cliffs and the two lots of springs, which, as unnamed, we called Trinity and Mosquito, the botanist can revel in numerous lorms of exquisite and little-known flora. Old friends of the Cythea, Lomaria, and Pteris kind at once attract attention, whilst the luc y botanist may find the rare Schizsea Dichotoma. The artist's eye is charmed with warm reds and yellows, and the glorious greens of nikau and tree-ferns. The tired swagman can get a good refresher from nature's thermal springs bar. These springs are marvellously salt, and I may be allowed to mention, as intei-esting to scientists, that' I noticed living infusoria, sponges, and confervoid growth thriving in the hottest of the water, which had a temperature of 152deg. Fahr. At the Trinity springs, those nearest the Blind Bay, heavy sulphurous fumes at times prevail, which have a curious depressing effect upon the visitor, after the manner of a young housewife's first pudding. Some day an enterprisinj? in-

'dividual 'will establish' an Hotel ab Wha'ngapourapoura—the safest harbour, on,, the, island (there is no hotel at presentron the , % island), and' a good road will be made thence * to the springs some four miles or less distant. As, however, the chief reason of my visit was to inquire t into the likelihood of valuable metals being found at certain points on the . island, I may mention that I prospected^, about five-and-thirty streams, including all tße more important on the island savni those at the extreme north. The result was find- ' ing fine colours of gold in three places : north of the Oneha Heads on the beach ; in the Kaitoki creek ; and in the Whanga- \ pourapoura creek. Only almost microscopic specks were found at the latter place ; and no " colours" were obtained anywhere save as mentioned. A richly arsenical mundic leader, in trachyte, is being opened up at Oneha by Mr Palmer, by means of a twenty - foot shaft and > crosscut. The stone I was informed had assayed 13 pennyweights of gold to the ton, _ andalso some Bilver. I have little doubtthafc it contains both these metals, but whether in payable quantities was notascertainab!©. As the leader is narrow, in bard rock, and the shaft in a bad and wet position, the mine has poor chanceß of being a success. Mr Springall, whose charming daughters are considered the belles of the island, kindly took me up the Oneha Creek some seven miles to a rich antimony lode, discovered some two years since by one Lee, a gumdigger. (In parenthesis, let me say something of the harm caused by this class of men to the island forests. The sad stcry of the destruction of the grand Waitakerei forest has been here re enacted. Wisely, most wisely, has the new Kauri Timber Company vetoed the presence of the "man of the spear " on its Barrier lands.) The antimony lode I found running north and south in a very distorted mass. The bed-rock is apparently a metamorphic one ; probably an altered sandstone. As antimony seems likely to continue at a far higher price than heretofore, this find may perhaps prove even a better speculation than the much talked*of copper mine in the extreme north of the island. I found traces of silver, chiefly as homides ab the pa, Trypnena Bay, at Blind Bay and elsewhere, but although I prospected some fifty so-called reefs, I did not find a single specimen of likely looking quartz from a gold-miner's point of view. The nearest approach to likely stone was at Blind Bay. Here Mr Ben. Sanderson kindly put us up, and showed us some of the mysteries of sharkfishing. Honey is one of the staple products of the Great Barrier, some ten or twelve tons of the same (valued at about £330) having been exported last year. I saw several wild " sugar-baers " taken, one of which gave 451b of strained honey. I noticed that the Ligurian, or yellow bee is fast driving the old black bee out of the forest. Howstrange that even in the insect world the dark race goes down before the pale invader. The best honey I tasted was from Mr Osborne'sapiary, butMr Blackwoou exports the largest quantity of any settler. Amongst the other products of the island are gum (the principal source of income) and wool. Fish abound, and something might be done with the beautitul granites and porpherios I noticed towards the north of the island. Bananas ripen on the island, and I never saw finer tobacco or mulberries than are flourishing at some of the settlers' places. To the sportsman wild cattle shooting, boar hunting, pigeon and pheasant shooting, boabing, fishing, etc., make the Great Barrier a little Paradise, and I left it with the full intention of returning at a future date.