But I cannot attempt
to describe all I saw; there were large gardens, with every fruit
and vegetable which England produces; and many belonging to a
warmer clime. I may instance asparagus, kidney beans, cucumbers,
rhubarb, apples, pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives,
gooseberries, currants, hops, gorse for fences, and English oaks;
also many kinds of flowers. Around the farmyard there were stables,
a thrashing-barn with its winnowing machine, a blacksmith's forge,
and on the ground ploughshares and other tools: in the middle was
that happy mixture of pigs and poultry, lying comfortably together,
as in every English farmyard. At the distance of a few hundred
yards, where the water of a little rill had been dammed up into a
pool, there was a large and substantial water-mill.
All this is very surprising when it is considered that five years
ago nothing but the fern flourished here. Moreover, native
workmanship, taught by the missionaries, has effected this
change;--the lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's wand. The
house had been built, the windows framed, the fields ploughed, and
even the trees grafted, by the New Zealander. At the mill a New
Zealander was seen powdered white with flower, like his brother
miller in England.
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