AN ADVENTURE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 846, 5 July 1878, Page 3

AN ADVENTURE.

—o — Soma of our Provincial Surveyors hate no little experience of “ moving accidents by flood and field.” In a private letter received recently from Hie West Coast, one of them who had been on an expedition up the Turakiua river, thus describes hoiv he and his party were discomfited and put to flight by a wild bull. He writes:—“ The other day 1 and five Maoris were coming down the Turakina river in a canoe. We were passing a little clump of trees growing close to the side of. the river, when out there rushed a magnificent speoimetl of a wild bull, who straightway jumped into the shallow water, and ‘ went for’ the canoe and its occupants. We w T ero only fifteen feet from the shore on the bull’s side, and so he was down upon us almost instantly. It was a supreme moment when that bull charged. It was fame qui pent, and ‘the devil take the hindmost. ’ The Maoris ' stood not upon the order of their going/ but jumped overboard at once, and swam for their very lives. There wasn’t much time to think, so just as the bull was almost upon me, I also took a header and made for a big boulder in the stream, upon which I climbed. Meantime, one Maori had reached the shore, and the others when they followed, climbed up a small tree, and just as the last one got up it fell down, tearing up by the roots. As long as 1 live, 1 never shall forget the faces of those men as they picked themselves up from out the boughs of that tree, and looked for the bull who, having swamped the canoe, and turned everything in it out into the water, was swimming over to attack them. They made off for the bush, where they managed to dodge their pursuer, and returned one by one to help to fish our things up out of the water and help to put them in the canoe again, after which we went peaceably on our way. I was pretty well sear-ed at the time, but when it was over I laughed till my sides ached again. - Post.