Egmont from the Sea.

Taranaki's noble mountain is, in the present writer's belief, the most beautiful natural object in New Zealand. It is surely worthy of a place on our postage stamps, our coins (when New Zealand has its own coinage), and in other ways, as a kind of national token of this country. Seen through a framing of forest and fern trees, it is a picture entrancing. More glorious still does it appear when seen from the ocean. I have just been reading Captain Conor O'Brien's book “Across Three Oceans,” in which he describes his world cruise some years ago in his little vessel, the 20-ton ketch Saoirse, flying the flag of the Irish Free State. This is his impression of Taranaki from the sea, his first sight of New Zealand at daylight as he approached the West Coast from Melbourne:—

“… The clouds were lying low on the water, and high above them the sun was emerging from behind the colossal cone of Mount Egmont, which I had approached within forty miles. I think this was the most impressive mountain scenery I ever saw. The parabolic sweep of a mountain cone is a very beautiful line, but it is commonly rather flat; the andesite of Egmont, however, forms an unusually steep curve, and moreover the less interesting 3000 feet at the bottom (the whole peak is 8000 feet) were cut off by the low mists and the curvature of the globe. Various causes make a mountain look big; the stark symmetry of the volcano is one, the complexity of such a system as Snowdon is another, but the most potent is the contrast when one sees them standing on another element, such as the true horizon, or a mist lying on a level plain, so that there is a gap of as many miles as one's imagination cares to make it between the foreground and the background.”

Captain O'Brien wielded a rather mordant and ironical pen when describing colonial towns and people. He was cruel enough to say that New Zealand was so unreliable a place that rows of houses were sometimes seen sliding down the mud streets. But his testimonial to Egmont's beauty makes up for all that.