Forty years ago this beach was thronged with miners seeking gold; now not one lives here, and there is very little gold left, though we did come across three "beach combers," who were washing sand in wooden troughs, in the hope of finding a deposit of gold at the bottom.
[Illustration: SOUTHERN ALPS FROM MOUTH OF WAIHO RIVER. _To face page 164._]
The bluffs, which here run down to the sea, are ancient glacial moraines--high-piled heaps of boulders and loose soil, covered now with wind-swept tea-tree bushes, tall forest trees and crimson rata vine, and between the headlands, where once the glaciers flowed, are peaceful lagoons bordered with flax plants and rushes.
At low tide you may skirt the bluffs on the sand between sea and cliff, but sometimes you must ride over them--up a steep track through scrub and forest, where a horse accustomed to the beach will carry you safely; and from his back, you look down through tall brown trunks on the blue sea far below.
A ride of six miles from the mouth of the Waiho brings you to Okarito--a tiny township and port--its one street all grass-grown, and only a few houses and the wharf to mark what was, in the days of gold, a big and thriving town. In those days it had two Churches, many banks and hotels, and in the saloons, gay doings night after night.
Another eight mile ride through the forest brought us to a small hotel, where I joined the mail coach which took me back to trains and towns, and very sorrowfully I said goodbye to the mountains and to my friends in Westland.
As in other countries, so in New Zealand, there are limestone caves, with stalactites and stalagmites, and all their effect of wonder and mystery. They are found in some of the low hills which rise in the heart of the Maori-owned "King Country," and as they are only a few miles from the Main Trunk railway line, which connects Wellington with Auckland, they can be very conveniently visited by tourists going north or south.
The distance from Wellington to the caves is three hundred miles. Even on the main lines the average speed of an express train is only twenty-five miles an hour, so that a journey of three hundred miles takes a whole day, and gives the traveller many excellent opportunities for studying the landscape.