On the River.

A Christmas-season memory of one's own, from many memories, this clinches —if such clinching were needed—the good old angler's philosophy.

We were canoeing and camping up the Mokau River, up above the limits of steamboat navigation. One evening, after a particularly strenuous day paddling and poling and rapid-climbing, we ate our supper of fried bacon and “hard tack” at a fire we had made on a snagstrewn little island in the river, at the Panirau bend, where forested ranges rose steeply for nearly a thousand feet above us. Wearily we turned in, and listened to the voices of the night. Rapids rumbled and growled above and below our island; we heard the kiwi's call and the high melancholy crake of the weka. Heard, too, the song of the mosquito, and felt its accompaniment, but not for long; even that could not keep tired canoemen awake. And morning on Panirau—how glorious a sight! We turned out refreshed for another day's adventure. This canoe voyage of ours had all the charm of an exploring expedition. Something new lay round every bend in the winding Mokau. As we opened up a long smooth reach above the rapids, the lights and shadows and tender tints of early morning were beautiful beyond imagining. A shimmer of mist lay along the river; fog banks belted the upper parts of the hills. Then up over the lofty Ranga-a-Waitara range swung the glorious sun, and cliff and forest and river were all suffused with the softest rosy light. The mist veil melted away, the white forms of the Haumaringirngi, the foggy phantoms, floated away, and into the deeper hollows of the hills, the mountain tops lifted clear in the pearly morning light.

How could one but rejoice and be strong on such a morning, when all the world was good!