The first part was flat and swampy, but it soon rose a little, and ran alongside the fine stream which passed behind my house, and which here rushed and gurgled over a rocky or pebbly bed, sometimes leaving wide sandbanks on its margins, and at other places flowing between high banks crowned with a varied and magnificent forest vegetation.

After about two miles, the valley narrowed, and the road was carried along the steep hill-side which rose abruptly from the water's edge.

In some places the rock had been cut away, but its surface was already covered with elegant ferns and creepers.

Gigantic tree-ferns were abundant, and the whole forest had an air of luxuriance and rich variety which it never attains in the dry volcanic soil to which I had been lately accustomed.

A little further the road passed to the other side of the valley by a bridge across the stream at a place where a great mass of rock in the middle offered an excellent support for it, and two miles more of most picturesque and interesting road brought me to the mining establishment.
This is situated in a large open space, at a spot where two tributaries fall into the main stream.