THE LAND OF THE LEVEL ROAD.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 806, 2 May 1910, Page 6

THE LAND OF THE LEVEL ROAD.

IN • QTJEEN CHARLOTTE SOTTNBj (Br Wni, Larson. At Tory Channel tbfere shines tea lights Two leading lights they be, An' they ain't as bright"s the lights o* nights Along old Lambton Quay— The skipper he said, "Don't worry your head. Two lamps is enough for me." Out beyond the black outstanding rocks of Barref s Reef, rocks which Kupe, the great Jlaori navigator' called the Weeping Party, the Arahura drives into the clean, slow-heaving swell,- turning her bows towards Sinclair Head, that iooms darkly in ■ the last gleam of the afterglow. The ocean swell, passing beneath her keel, surges shoreward over the lowed heads of the Weeping Party and breaks, bleaks, breaks, wide and long, in a wonderful whiteness, And as each undulation passes, one by one the heads, of the Weepers reappear, the water pouring from them in veritable cascades of tears. On the steamer the lamps are all aglow and most of the passengers are on deck, for it promises to be an ideal trip acros3 to Picton, the city of the Sounds. The very slow sweep of the' swell gives scarcely any motion to the ship, and with llio clearing of the Heads, even this unsteadiness is left behind.

Lights'just beginning to twinkle their nightly vigil away to tho right mark the shores of Lyall Bay, and' soon another galaxy of lights, backcd by a soft radiance thrown upwards from hidden lamps; shows where Island Bay curves brightly in the shelter of its island, with its populated valley beyond. . One group of lights moves among the .fixed ones— an electric car bound for the city, fiv» miles away. Every ! ten minutes thess cars come and go for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. Twenty miles away across the Strait dwell- men who hare no lamps and no streets; they;could not run cars because they have no solid roads, only the one wide waterway of £h» Sound that' is highway and bv-way and all, in that Land of the Level Road.

Sweeping past Sinclair Head and on-! wards to dreaded Torawhiti the beauty of tho s?a and. stars; and the faintlylooming land strikes a hidden chord of poetry in many a traveller's being. And on snch a night, and on such a sea, tha imagination leaps back into the past, when, before the white men came, this was called by the Maoris, the sea of Rnawakn, and those wonderful navigar cors crossad -and recrossed these . waters in canoes, sometimes using two canoes lashed together, The Maoris ascribed all the fierce tides and gale 6 and sea and currents to the powers of atuas and taniwhas. One specially dreadful place was Nga-whatn "(The Bocks), now known to us as The Brothers, where a lighthouse sends a vivid flash of light river the sea every ten 'seconds. This was a tapu place, where dwelt an atua or deity, who controlled the winds and seas, and it was advisable to propitiate him with incantations or charms, so / that the; canoes might pass the sacred crags, in safety. And when a newcomer was m the canoe, .it was customary, for him to veil his face ; when passing and to keep his eyes covered till the rocks were far astern. But against the dangers of the troubled seas of Nga-whatu, there oould be summoned the aid of another ato a, who dwelt in the blue ' depth: of'Ruakawa. If a canoe were in danger, this sea-god, or taniwha, wonld swim beside it, and by. his sacred mana make safe the way. • ; . Thpse days have passed long since, yet even now it wants but a touch of. imagination to turn the winking light upon the Brothers into the eye of a; guardian atua.

With the Brothers' light on her starboard bow, the Axahura is steered straight towards the distant dark hills. Somewhere in that gloom lies Tory Channel, a passage discovered at different times by Kupe, Cook and Guard, a whaler, and finally named after the New Zealand emigrant ship Tory,. which sailed through the' channel in 3839. To find this entrance in the darkness seems difficult. The officer on the bridge has his night glasses levelled, searching the distacce, and presently the naked eye distinguishes a faint light, elusive, yet nevertheless there. As . the steamer draws nearer, it is seen that there are two points of white' light, the leading lights of Tory Channel.. The night-glasse3 aTe laid aside. The steamer- '3 steered so that the lights show one uoove tho other.'' When they are so grouped' the vessel is heading right up the mjddle of Tory Channel through which narrow passage the tide is ..racing' strongly. The-course lies to the left, the steer-ing-gear clatters, the bows turn obediently and we are swinging up the quiet sound. The tiny beacon lights on the dark hillside are soon lost astern, there is no light save that of the stars. Yet the ship is'navigated at full speed and with as mnch confidence as in daylight. The question is often asked: "How do. they steer in the sounds when there is never a light from Tory up to Picton, twenty miles inland?" And the answer is: "By the liill-tops." "And tho stars?" "Yes, sometimes perhaps, but chiefly by the hill-tops. The points and bays are in the shadows and indiscernible, but the headlands and the hills always show against the sky, except in fog and to the seaman these beacons are easy to read. In fog the steamers always anchor. To-night the hills show very clearly and the stars so brilliant that the funnel," masts, and rigging. stand out in black relief. On the light is Arapawa Island which separates Tory Channel from the main entrance to Queen Charlotte: Sound. The Maoris of old gave credit for this island's existence to the great Kupe, who besides being a navigator was also an island-maker. Old legends tell of Kupcy "Who severed Mana from the main "Who set Kapiti's isle apart. .' - And sundered Arapawa." ' • ' l

On this island, quite r.ear to the beacon lights that guided us in, is the historical whaling station of Te Awaite, but it was all in gloom as we came past. So in many a bay and inlet on the highway up to Pieton, dwell the settlers whose houses nestle against the ihlla and look out upon the road, the road that is very wide and wet and very leveL These lolk are early sleepers, for no lights show, as the ATahura, all ablaze with electric lights, and with the Blenheim Band pluy!ng on the boat-deck, 6teams up the sound, steering now by this and now by that hill or group of hills. Then someone says:

"There are tlie Three Knobs" The Three Knobs constitute the last hill-beacon, and are on tho crest of ■ Picton Point, which forms the bay in which lies Hcton. Sweeping round this point of land, Mabel Island slips past indistinctly, and the lights of Picton provoke a hoarse hoot from'the steamer's whistle. ' .

"To wake 'em up," suggests a passenger who has not visited the place before. How is he to know that Picton, that is, waterside Picton, never sleeps?, that at all hours of the night steamers come and go; that to be a wharf toiler here means being a night' worker? But with all this business there . is only one wharf at Picton,', and this belongs to the Railway Department, and is just a mass of railway tracks. Tho trucks literally . brush the sides of the steamers, while'passengers must dodga lamong th erails and wagons and freightpiles. Just as the process of disembarkation is in full swing the : gangway is hauled np to allow two waggons to pass. "Hurry up," said the steamboat manj "we want to get this job over and -get itway." "So do we," says he in charge of the wagons. And what of the passengers? , As they struggle with luggage and porters along this dreadful, wharf, they are soon confronted with a new danger in the shape of a loeomotive, which shunts across the wharf-head in a disconcerting manner. But having escaped these terrors and put this scene of bustle and fret behind us, we come upon Picton, beautiful in tho moonlight, the moon just .topping the hill. Bush and water, gloom and silver, there is poetry in it all. And the one star of light out on the water, the headlight of a motorlaunch, is a fitting, symbol for this town, at the head of a great water-way, to which all roads lead—all -water roads.