A perfect summer day; cool breeze, brilliant sky, rich vegetation.

Two or three times during the afternoon we saw wonderfully dense and beautiful forests, tumultuously piled skyward on the broken highlands--not the customary roof-like slant of a hillside, where the trees are all the same height.

The noblest of these trees were of the Kauri breed, we were told -- the timber that is now furnishing the wood-paving for Europe, and is the best of all wood for that purpose.

Sometimes these towering upheavals of forestry were festooned and garlanded with vine-cables, and sometimes the masses of undergrowth were cocooned in another sort of vine of a delicate cobwebby texture--they call it the "supplejack," I think.

Tree ferns everywhere--a stem fifteen feet high, with a graceful chalice of fern-fronds sprouting from its top--a lovely forest ornament.