Or  the  chain  of  little  lakelets  higher  up,


92  STUDIES    IN    NEW    ZEALAND    SCENERY

set  like  a  brooch  of  turquoises  upon  a  tawny
shoulder,  with  their  unambitious  view  out  over
the  wide  river-valley,  and  snowless  summits
beyond  visionary  in  violet  under  the  full  light  of
noon.  Or  we  can  boil  the  billy  in  the  kind  of  greenness
of  Governor's  Bush,  and,  deep  in  ferns  and  gossamers
and  mosses,  lie  back,  and  see,  through  the  blue  smoke,
nothing  taller  than  the  birch-tops ;  or  beside  that  other
loveliest  little  lake  on  Sealey  Range  (which  gleams
out,  so  light  a  bright  dark  eye,  from  among  the  shaggy
shimmer  of  its  snow-grass  "silver  and  gold  in  the
changing  light"),  and  add  to  its  exquisite  vignettes,
of  Sef  ton-snows  mirrored  in  the  morning  and
Aorangi's  sunset-pyre,  another  picture,  in  another
genre,  but  precious  all  the  same,  of  a  merry  red  fire
of  sticks  leaping  beneath  the  black  rock  at  one  end.
Then  there  is  the  mountain-scrub  to  be  considered : —
the  low  rounded  bosses  of  bright  veronica  and  dark
dwarf  totara,  fringed  celery-pine,  and  soft  grey
mountain-musk — useful,  in  times  of  extreme  need,
to  fill  a  pipe, — red-twigged  coprosmas,  with  berries
coral  or  pink  or  white,  cassinias  silvery-green,  whose
yellowish  flower-tufts  and  piquant  aroma,  that  at  the
seaside  speak  of  the  mountains,  bring  to  the  mountains
the  bright  memory  of  the  sea:  flax,  "Spaniards"  with
bayonets  of  golden-green,  and  ever  so  many  more.
