Stewart Island.

Southland Times, Issue 12769, 30 November 1893, Page 3

Stewart Island.

(from our own correspondent). This place is like a chrysalis that has burst its hibernal integument,and is rejoicing in the summer light. Every evil has its cqmpensation, sooner. or later, pace the pessimists. The nearer you are to the polar circle the fairer will be your summer. The present splendour makes amends for the surly winter with its cloudy winds and its drip-dripping. The place is alive again,and visitors in quest of recreation, or perhaps mending of some sort,are dropping in like pilgrims to a shrine. They bring no sombre airs with them, however. If they are coming to a shrine it is certainly not to do penance, unless it be a penance to go half mad with enthusiasm and make endless excursions by sea and land and eat, drink and be merry and let the world wag. Atra cwra seems to have been left moping on the other side of the strait. Well, let her mope : those happy souls don’t care how long. The present freedom and revel are a : delight and a glad change. Even those who have no decided appreciation of Nature f in her infinite variety of forms, and whose tastes do not lie in the way of scientific observation seem to have boundless enjoyment in the mere physical exuberance that accompanies activity and congenial fellowship. People don’t come here to study philosophy or in pursuit of science.: They refuse to be grave;,: They rightly resolve to draw upon Nature for a fresh store of energy in order the better to'/continue “the struggle for existence,” and they go about it in the most delightfully unartificial manner—and they succeed;. Certainly the means and appliances here are .perhaps unrivalled, and almost boundless. When you think you have exhausted the resources and are prepared, like another Alexander, ■ to sit down upon your log and lament that there is nothing more to be conquered, you come upon something unknown before, something really new, and perhaps enchanting, if you are in the mood. If you are in good humour and have patience for it, I will rehearse to you a new experience I had one ' day last week., I somewhat reluctantly joinod a light-hearted, not to Say effervescing party going to Pater- ' son’s Inlet. ! ! All things went gaily, our boat gliding like a spirit. We spread our lunch at an angle of a sandy beach strewn with '• . bright shells, making our dessert of muscles ■’ plucked from the neighbouring rocks and * roasted on the fire. We dallied around Bravo —a seml-Maori little settlement, other than the Neck—and walked over the pretty mole of sand at low water connecting the little with the mainland. We dallied too long. About halfway, on our return the. tide came in with" a bound, and meeting a stiffish breeze at an unfavourable angle offered a resistance it was impossible to contend With. ‘ Round the corner of Cooper’s Island, there was an unpleasant rip too. We declined to have further dealing with the rearing, plunging, and irregular mounds of it. A small open boat would never think of looking at it. It might just take in a trifling curling top that would land one—or should I say, water one, in the crystalline’halls of Amphitrite. Our craft was allowed to float down along the lee ■ shore of Cooper’s Island, which lies within the inlet. We came upon a pretty cove which - rnhs in for about two hundred yards or so—"■a shallow hook with an oozy bottom and almost surrounded by precipitous banks 1 densely covered with wood. Some of the 1 ; larger boughs that overhung the water were prettily festooned with shags, who eyed us 4 gravely as we passed, but whose gravity and ' repose were no more disturbed than if they had been Turks under the influence of ■ the sacred nargilieh. The place seemed as solitary and primitive as if it belonged to some palynological time, It being a fine moonlight night we made a fire

• near the shore, boiled our sweet billy, and supped in splendour sub Jove. We settled down on board, the ground being rather damp. Some ladies were of the company, . but npno of them could sing worth a pin, so they said. But they could talk, and we I did chat, tried conundrums and told stories. The novelty of the situation was one of its chief charms. But everything must have an ending. The ladies ensconscd themselves under the deck, the rest assuming various picturesque attitudes. A sort of dreamy semi-slumber reigned for a while. The night was a short one. The silence of it was not quite as complete as that of the evening described ; by Milton ‘when “silence was pleased.” Now and again one of these sinister-looking shags would make a flop in the water as if he fell off his perch in his sleep, and at times might be heard the wallop of some large fish —groper or shark — while overhead was the sough •of the wind among the taller trees, arid from the distance, as from some ‘‘ hoarse Trinaician shore ” came the deep, increasing sound of the surf. ' We saw the dawn advance at length and 1 presently listened to the song that welcomed the morning. W e never heard the like of it before, and we must go there or to some similar situation to hear the like again.- I called to mind a glorious summer night I passed on one of the Hebridean hills, when I could 'see the bright twilight circling round the north through the night, if night it could be called. As the light begun to gain strength bird after bird began his song: the blackcock, in mournful tone, as if lamenting a lost love, the snipe in aerial ring, whose wing sounds like the bleating of a goat, mellowed by distance, the plaintive plover, and the merrier rattle of the red grouse, etc., a numerous chorus. But it was tameness itself compared with the burst of music that introduced the day on that lonely island. The clear silvery sounds and the volume of it! A solitary tui began it. The bell bird took it up and many a sweet voice besides, a nation of kakas mixing in it. Every tree had found a tongue; the whole wood was vocal. All the voices, though ever so much varying, and each as it were singing at random, rose into a (splendid volume of sweet sounds,’a magnificent harmony filling all the air. They seemed to be in hundreds, and all as if striving to make it a concert worthy of the. advancing light. No artist and poet combined could describe it, or even help you to imagine it. To realise the glory of that morning hymn it must be heard, and once heard the memory of it can only die with memory itself. It lasted in its strength for several minutes, then gradually tapered down, and so we hade the sweet songsters farewell. We arrived at home for an early breakfast, and it is melancholy to have to relate that the song of the frying pan seemed to have stirred up more joy even in gentle breasts than a grove of bell birds could have done. The ecstasy of the gloamin’ was lost in another—the fine gold was changed. , 28th Nov.