Would he be tall, dark and handsome? What if he should be short, and stocky and uninteresting? I knew that he was the main reason for my visit and I made up my mind to be quite indifferent towards him, and I built up a barrier in my mind against him, not stopping to reason that he might be just as unwilling as I for a stranger to come into his life. I spent another lonely night at an hotel, spending the evening alone in my room. Early next morning I wandered along the beach and wondered whether mother and father were thinking of me and following the stages of my lonely journey. But I felt quite excited as I realised that by night-fall, I would be there! How would they receive me? How would I find them? If Hakopa was only half as nice as mother had made him out to be, he would have at least come this far to meet me, I thought; however, as the morning advanced, I boarded the big bus and started on the final stage of my journey. I gazed out on what must once have been heavy native bush, but what was now a tangled mass of fallen trees and stumps — wilful destruction I thought—left to rot away, while fern and rubbish sprang up. We crossed the Hokitika River, and for miles there were great heaps of dirt which had been dredged from the river as the search for gold still went on; out over barren marshy looking country, stripped of its native beauty, yet here and there were still some beauty spots, such as Lake Kaniere and others. By midday, we had reached Hari Hari, a tiny village at the foot of the mountains, where we had lunch. Here our driver was changed, and he took over the other bus which had arrived simultaneously with ours, driving it back to town, while the driver of that bus took over our bus and drove us over the most exciting part of our bus ride. I was to learn that a special team of drivers, took the buses over this part of the trip, the town drivers turning back from Hari Hari. How I loved that part of my journey, as I recalled all that mother had told me of her girlhood days in these parts, the names of the numerous rivers we passed over, with here and there an old line, over which busy little loggies must have puffed in the busy days of the sawmills. Up into heavily wooded hills we wended, down steep glades where here and there nestled an occasional lake onto which we could look from high up on the mountainside. There was Lake Ianthe, Wahapo and largest and most beautiful of them, Lake Mapourika nestling in dense bush amidst towering hills. Then we reached Waiho and the famous Franz Joseph glacier, where we paused awhile to view the sight. We visited the little church just a little way in the bush, with its window looking out across the tops of the trees to that mighty mass of ice which seemed to