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On the sides of the chalk hills, though not on their summits, these streams cut narrow gullies and glens. Wherever, in fact, there is hilly, broken ground, the little rills form these broken ravines and gullies, often only a few yards in width from side to side. Usually these brooklet valleys are choked with brambles or fern, and filled with rank undergrowth.
One day I came upon a man kneeling under a hedge, examining some object on the ground, fern or flower, or perhaps insect. His costume showed that he was no native of the locality; I took him for a stray townsman, probably a naturalist. He wore a straw hat and a rough summer suit; a wallet hung from his shoulder. The sound of my steps on crackling wood caused him to turn and look at me.
It was built in the fork of an elder-bush, to which it was moored by strips of fine bark and cobweb, its downy bulk being composed by a fitted mass of fine grass, willow cotton, fern wood, and other similar ingredients. It is about three inches in depth, outside measurement. But this depth greatly varies in different specimens.
They started with the first of the daylight, but the timber grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded and for a day or two they wearily struggled through it and the clogging masses of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber over mazes of fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches caught their loads.
Edward then crept softly nearer to them: the wind, which was strong, blew from where they were to where Edward stood, so that there was less chance of their hearing his approach. Edward went on his hands and knees, and crawled through the fern until he gained another tree, and within ten yards of them, and from where he could hear what they might say.
At length the estuary narrowed, and assumed the appearance of a winding river, with low hilly banks covered with fern and bushes. One and a half miles from this brought us to a rocky ledge across the stream, preventing further progress in the boat, and marking the junction of the fresh and salt water. Here Mr.
Evidences began to multiply of a serious attention to the teaching of the missionaries. Here and there in unexpected quarters signs appeared of coming change. To use the picturesque native simile, "the fire was spreading in the fern." Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward. Exod.
Then, though the ground-flowers cannot compare in number with those of England or Australia, the Islands are the chosen land of the fern, and are fortunate in flowering creepers, shrubs, and trees. There are the koromiko bush with white and purple blossoms, and the white convolvulus which covers whole thickets with blooms, delicate as carved ivory, whiter than milk.
Immense ramifications they are great dark halls, roofed au naturel in corrugated rock with fissured sides, where maiden-hair fern hangs cool and green.
Mr and Mrs Redbreast were just married, and shocking as it may seem, were quarrelling about the place where they should live. Mr Robin wanted the snug quarters in the ivy, down by the melon pits; while Mrs Redbreast said it was draughty, and made up her mind to live in the rockery amongst the fern.
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