The Peerless Playground of New Zealand

(Continued from page 16).

Sounds diadem of beauty. Here the trees are the thickest, the waters clearest, the panoramas richest in surprise, the changing views daintiest in their delicate adornment.

The soft-coloured hills here ring waterways that are in all shapes and sizes, from the tiny tarn to the long narrow fiord. Now and again a slender pass unexpectedly broadens a little and appears to be proud of displaying a small beach of glittering sand. Now and again the emerald waters are fathomless right to the rocky or bush-clad shore.

Reflections are myriad, and the moving ripple of the launch's wake makes crazy patterns in the mirrored picture of tree and hillside.

It was heartbreaking to leave the defiles of Tennyson Inlet, but another kind of beauty was now emerging. As the board waters of the Tawhitinui Reach flashed in the sunlight, they gaily turned a washing blue, and, by manoeuvring the launch, my friend of the camera got a peep through the distant miles of the northern Pelorus Sound at the entrance to the open sea.

I advise folks taking trips about the Sounds to take a map. It is impossible to remember where you are, or where directions lie, in this delightful but confusing maze of channel and hillside. I can quite understand our host telling us that it was years before he would risk a night journey. “No traffic signs,” he said, “and no corners to recognise.”

The journey home was just as fascinating. We called in at “Homewood” to find the meeting over. Launches were leaving in various directions, rowboats busily plying between the shore and the bigger craft, folks going aboard in the matter of fact fashion of a crowd getting into taxis on the arrival of the “Limited” at Wellington. And again we called at landing-places of various designs, and deposited passengers.

Then came Sunday; Sunday morning was the “Sontag” of Bendl's tone poem.

Dreaminess was over everything. The sun was hot on the wide verandah, flowers glowed, and a blue-eyed small guest named Margaret Ann floated joyously about the pretty grounds like a piece of coloured thistledown. Even The Portage wharf lost its mundane air and seemed to be a toy standing on satin.

In many respects, the long views here resemble those at Lake Waikare-Moana. Here are the same successive mystery ridges, fading in the distance to a blue haze. But here, one knows, that between those far lines of veiled mountain heights are hidden winding reaches of shining water.

From a tall summit, too, the lower, irregularly shaped peninsulas, islands, promontories, hummocks and forelands look like Bobdignagian monsters afloat in silver seas.

Never in a life-time of sight-seeing have I felt so loath to leave a place. Time ought to stand still here; there is, by the way, an old clock in the little Portage post office which shows 8.40 permanently, reminding me of Rupert Brooke's “Stands the church clock at ten to three?”

It is easy to see why the same people have been coming here year after year. It is a mark of the natural genius of these born hosts, Mr. and

Typical cottage annex at “The Portage.”

Mrs. Lawrence that the modernity of this imposing private hotel, and its range of metropolitan comforts, have left untouched the homeliness and “Sounds” atmosphere of this elysium of peace and contentment. I can understand the gracious personality of Mrs. Lawrence, for she is of the Sounds, an emanation, as it were. Mine hosts are known as friends in a thousand New Zealand homes; formality melts in the presence of either; they seem to be the handiwork of their surroundings.

I repeat that the most obstinate case of worry, the most disagreeable example of vexation, the most desperate form of pessimism will vanish in Pelorus Sound. Beauty is healing, and beauty in this idyllic place comes in plentitude, unbidden and in quiet.

The stout-hearted settlers who wrest a living from the hillsides here have compensations; their ugliest troubles must have often looked trivial when they looked about them at Nature's largesse. They live in a land which Captain Cook described as “a fairyland of beauty and music,” and his words remain true to this day.

The little British war-brig after which Pelorus Sound was named is an immortal vessel now for this wonderland known as the Marlborough Sounds will give increasing happiness to future millions.