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And pushed out from this, six hundred miles eastward, like a strong outpost, is New Zealand; itself larger than Great Britain; its shores so scooped and torn by the waves that it must be a very paradise of commodious bays and safe havens for the mariner; and lifted up, as if to relieve it from island tameness, are great mountains and dumb volcanoes, worthy of a continent, and which hide in their bosoms deep, broad lakes.
As soon as this rock was thus curiously scooped to their liking, a prodigious number of hands must have been employed in chipping the outside of it, which is now as smooth as the surface of a pebble; and is in several places hewn out into pillars that stand like the trunks of so many trees bound about the top with garlands of leaves.
It is easier for matter, as well as for man, to get entangled in mangrove roots than to get out again. The sun and the rain did their work on this decaying stuff. Thus, soil was formed, atop the coral and in the hollows scooped out of its surface by wind or tide.
She stooped to dip her hand and taste it, and then drew back. "It looks as if it would bite," she said, and I took off the lid of the can and scooped up a draught and drank it. "The sweetest water I ever tasted, and cold as ice. It is as good as the water at La Tour." Then she drank also, and then she washed out the milk-can, but would not pour the dirty water back into the basin.
She took off our gloves and overshoes, then ran to the door and scooped up a basin of snow for our numb hands and feet, snow which felt curiously warm and comforting. While the snow drew out the frost, she hastened about, making strong, hot tea. While we drank the tea and felt warmth slowly creeping over us, "Why on earth did you attempt to come here on a night like this?" she demanded.
For seconds the flood rushed out, a visible thing, gray from the soil which it scooped up; and while its fury lasted every building on the asteroid quivered and groaned from the terrific strain. And where, a moment before, men had stood two white men and a black, and a score of coolie-guards there was now nothing save the flat rock under the gaping hole.
And not any more like reality is the scene disclosed to his view when, after passing around the nearest of the twin mound-shaped hills, and entering a gate-like gorge that opens between them, he sees before him and below hundreds of feet below a valley of elliptical form like a vast basin scooped out of the plain. But for its oval shape he might deem it the crater of some extinct volcano.
Some lay flat on their stomachs, and drank from the overflow of the fine little spring; while others scooped up the water in the cup formed by the palms of their hands.
Every here and there, as we travelled along, we passed some holes scooped out by the natives to catch rain, and in some of these there was still a muddy residuum; we moreover observed that the inhabitants of this desert made these holes in places the best adapted to their purpose, where if the slightest shower occurred, the water falling on hard clay would necessarily run into them.
A wide extent of open sea was the next scene in the panorama, to be succeeded by a picturesque island, clad in verdure; then two small, boldly defined, rocky islands; next a low range of five islands slightly connected, seeming like a tiny range in mid-ocean; a higher chain of islands was crenellated and presented the appearance of being scooped out and showing a light yellow soil.
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