Crossword-Solution: TOTARA 6 letters, 13 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

There are traces all over the hills of vast forests having once existed; chiefly of totara, a sort of red pine, and those about us are scattered with huge logs of this valuable wood, all bearing traces of the action of fire; but shepherds, and explorers on expeditions, looking for country, have gradually consumed them for fuel, till not many pieces remain except on the highest and most inaccessible ranges.

The first thing to be done was to pitch the tent on the little flat at the very top of the hill: it was a very primitive affair; two of the thinnest and longest pieces of totara, with which Flagpole is strewed, we used for poles, fastening another piece lengthwise to these upright sticks as a roof-tree: this frame was then covered with the large double blanket, whose ends were kept down on the ground by a row of the heaviest stones to be found.

The next step was to collect wood for a fire, which was not difficult, for at some distant time the whole of the hill must have been covered by a forest of totara trees; it has apparently been destroyed by fire, for the huge trunks and branches which still strew the steep sides are charred and half burnt.

Therefore, these things having been set forth, it was not strange that the Bush Robin, having eaten a full meal of fat white grubs, should sit on a bough in the shade of a big _totara_ tree and watch, with good-natured interest begotten of the knowledge that he had dined, the movements of the world around him.

Along its banks grew mighty pines, the _rimu_, the _totara_, and the broad-spreading black-birch, their trunks hidden in dense undergrowth and a tangle of creepers; while here and there beside the sparkling waters grew thick clumps of bright green tree-ferns.