I have heard of in New Zealand. Between the lake and the Hokitika runs a stream in which there is good fishing, soon to be spoilt by the muddy refuse which defiles all watercourses near a gold-field.
Not long ago a message from Ross reached me on a Monday morning, having been delayed several days by flooded rivers; a fatal accident underground; a fall of earth had crushed a man, one of a party of Cornish miners. The letter said that the funeral would be deferred until Monday, in hopes that I might be able to come. Going down to the river, I got my usual boat and man, and with the aid of a strong breeze, we sailed across the estuary; then, with a good horse, I made way down the beach, in spite of flooded streams and awkward quicksands. Reaching Ross in early afternoon, I found all work suspended, and the funeral procession ready to start. "We knew you would come if it were possible." St. Paul's Church stands on a terrace at the upper end of the township, commanding a view of the whole of it, with a cemetery above it on the slope of the hill. As I stood there waiting, I looked down, not only on a scene of singular beauty, but also on one of those occasional outcrops of human sympathy in time of disaster, not readily forgotten. An extensive valley, encircled by primæeval forest-clad hills, a few years ago untrodden by man's foot, its silence only broken by the voices of birds and the murmur of the stream winding through it, to-day the habitation of some four thousand people, dotted with huts and tents and mining machinery; the main street of the town, which leads up to the church, thronged with men, making way for a procession of four hundred miners; the coffin, with its cross of white clematis, carried between its bearers; the
