The most rapid change I have ever noticed in Nature's colour schemes was at Waikaremoana. It was with almost lightning rapidity, or so it seemed.

I shall always remember Waikaremoana as a study in blues—blue water, bluer even than Blue Lake, Rotorua, blue hills and blue sky.

Waikaremoana is a lake of many moods, and visitors come away with one or another uppermost in their minds. I must have struck its blue day.

Guide books tell us that Waikaremoana is the “sea of rippling waters,” and many travellers agree. Others have seen the lake flying with spume in a howling gale, or silent and sullen through a curtain of rain. Others remember it for the tuis and bellbirds, or for its unspoiled virgin bush, or its waterfalls, or its delicious trout, or, in season, its red and juicy cherries.

A lot may depend on the mood of the visitor as well as the mood of the lake, or, perhaps, like the cherries at Lake House Inlet, the blues are only seasonal—the entire blues, I mean.

What I saw when Waikaremoana flashed into my vision was a whole landscape of blues, and nothing else but blue, except a few flecks of white on the choppy water and a small white cloud or two overhead. The scene was so striking that now, a year later, it is just as vivid to me as it was then.

For a long time I was puzzled how any landscape could have been so extra-one colour. I had no thought at first of an illusion. It was not until I was leaving the lake on my return home that I discovered the solution.

Nature had played me a strange prank, demonstrating how quickly she could change her colour schemes. The change was just as rapid as scenes flash off and on the motion picture screen, and it was this rapidity which caused the illusion.

I approached the lake from the Wairoa end. It was mid-summer, and the hill pastures everywhere had turned to gold and brown. The eyes of man become quickly accustomed to the one colour tone, and, unless we speed from a valley of luscious green to parched ridges in a very short space of time, we accept it as the general colour scheme.

So it was with me. Everything, except the red roofs of the homesteads, was tinged with gold or brown, even in the shaded valleys, for the summer had been dry and hot in that part of the East Coast.

The golden browney tinge became more apparent as we began to rise on nearing the Tuai power house, with its attendant village which lives as far as possible on community lines, with its community garden, its community cow and community amusement. The inhabitants pay no rates and no taxes, for they live in Government houses on Government property.

As the car rose from Tuai to wind about, we looked down on top of the power house and community village, a bright patch on the landscape of gold and brown. Higher, we saw more of the Tuai power works, the surge chamber at the top of the power lines, the stream that provided the water, the man-made channels through which it had been diverted to fit in with the scheme, and here and there a deep-blue lakelet, mere puddles compared with the big lake above. The shimmering blue of these ponds was the only vivid contrast to the golds and the browns.

Two thousand feet up, we stopped to look back. Nothing but hills stretched away and below, and deep down in the valley past the community village was the ribbon of road we had just traversed.

Everywhere, gold and brown.

The last, short climb took but a minute. Turning a wide bend, we began to descend a little. A second bend, a short row of trees, then ….

Suddenly, rounding a third bend, there flashed before us the vision of blue. It was all the more remarkable because of its sudden appearance so soon after looking at nothing but golds and browns.

Everything in, on, about and above the lake was blue. Only one other colour obtruded, if white is a colour, and that most insignificantly.

A stiff breeze was blowing across the lake from the direction of Hopuruahine Inlet. The broad expanse of water was as blue as that in the blue tub at home on Mondays. The wind whipped the lake into white horses, and made foaming spray on the rocky shore, providing the only sharp conflict among the universal blues. The thickly wooded slopes round the lake were a deep blue in the distance, melting into lighter shades in the hills behind, a bluish hue even extending to the cliffs close at hand and the saw-tooth rocks of the nearest reef, although in reality these were a dark grey, as we saw after our eyes became used to the scene. The sky above was a vivid blue, with only a stray white cloud or two to relieve the monotony of the colour scheme.

The atmosphere, too, had changed. Whereas, on the other side of the hill, it had been still and hot, the stiff breeze from across the lake cooled and refreshed us. We seemed to have been transported suddenly to a different climate.

Man becomes used quickly to his surroundings. During the several days spent on the lakeside eating Waikaremoana cherries and trout, boating and swimming, our eyes became used to the blues.

When we returned home by the same direction as that by which we came, the change back to the golds and the browns was just as sudden and as marked as when we came without warning on the blues.

“Parson?” said the tobacconist to the inquisitive pressman, “Yes, parsons are heavy smokers mostly, and some of them are amongst my best customers. No, they don't bother about cigarettes much, I think, generally prefer the pipe. Keen judges of tobacco, too. Why I started to stock the five toasted brands on the advice of a parson. A good tip, too. My first order was only a small one, but I'm selling more toasted now than anything else. Is it as pure as it is cracked up to be? Rather! If there's any purer (or better) baccy than Cut Plug No. 10 (Bull's head), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold, I'd like to know. Why is it so pure? You want to know a lot, don't you?—because it's toasted. That's why. How is the toasting done? Ask the manufacturers. It's their secret. It gets the nicotine out of the leaf and at the same time gives these blends their fine flavour and beautiful bouquet. No, there's no other toasted tobaccos manufactured. What—are you off? Well so long! Be good.”*

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Up the Mokau— (Cont. from page 15)

variety of greenstone, the rich, deep-green unspecked pounamu. The river, smooth and strong, ripples musically against the rocky banks, enamelled with red moss, and swishes the drooping flax and ferns as it goes. A kingfisher sits on a branch above the river, and looks at himself in the water below, till, hearing the splash of our paddles, he flashes across the river, a streak of blue and white. The afternoon sun gilds the tree-tops; the far end of the reach glistens and twinkles in the golden light.