GIFTS FROM THE SEA

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 5 December 1925, Page 11

GIFTS FROM THE SEA

-jVroT a tree grows in Iceland, except a sort of willow no higher than a man’s head. Yet the farmers on the south and . west coasts sit over roaring log fires. The trees from which these logs came grew thousands of miles away, and aim a present from the Gulf Stream, which has brought them from the far Caribbean. Quantities of American driftwood land upon the coasts of Norway. In Orkney and the Hebrides great treasures oi' driftwood come • ashore after westerly storms, and once a cargo of mahogany was cast ashore on the coasts of the Faroe Islands. Over two thousand pounds’ worth of this

valuable timber was collected. But the most wonderful treasures of driftwood are those found upon the coast of Alaska itself. The Black Stream, the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, piles treasures from Asia and y even from South America upon the barren beaches. In some of the coves tlie shingle is choked and hidden by vast trunks which are heaped ten feet deep. Here -arc camphor trees from Formosa and rare timbers from China and Japan. Tn some plaees you may dig down for yards and And nothing but masses of timber, some rotten, some so pickled by sea water that it lasts like rock.