WAYSIDE NOTES.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2647, 11 August 1871, Page 3

WAYSIDE NOTES.

{By our Special Reporter out on a Holiday.) There is a police camp at Lowther. Fortins township read what I have said about Athol over again. I will save compos wages, paper, ink, and my brains. J ne Elbow is 25 miles from Invercargill. Jbere is a railway grievance at the Elbow—about crossing the river somewhere or other—-I don’t know where ; you had better hnd out. I was told, but forgot the merits of the case. In these cases you cannot please all parties. At this point, on the Five River Plains, a junc'ion of loads and consequent traffic meet. Besides being on the main road to Kingston, the traffic to the Te Anau and University Endowment country diverges from this point. It will in the future be a railway terminus, where all the Te Anau loading will be deposited. Situated on a level and ff rtile plain, it possesses great agricultural and pastoral resources ; and should friend Stafford’s idea that he broached be carried out—of Government taking purchased land for special settlement at a reasonable rate —may be the nucleus of a populous and thriving district. Mine host Fletcher has travelled a good deal in his time, and can afford an enquiring mind some : curious details of past legislation in Southland. Rightly considered, the Colony owes much to Southland. She has been trying experiments in road making and means of transit for the guidance of all her sister Provinces, Although she has spent half a million of money, and sold all her most available land, she has fifty miles of railway to show for it. She did not pull up the rails on the line and sell them to a Kawa-leawa Coal Co like our avrogant and elder sister in the Northern Island. What though she laid longitudinal rails on the highway for wheeled Vehicles to run on, considering all conveyances should be of one gnage, and all men be enabled to drive straight on them, instead of employing couluroy, should she be sneered at for this ? And if it were fondly imagined the passage of iron wheels over wooden rails would render the wood capable of sustaining a heavy traffic, and obtaining a coating of iron by the contract—is it anything more absurd than Millar’s indestructible antifriction tires? What though white pine were used for sleepers instead of totara, ratta, or matai —is it not essential to know the quality and durability of our native woods ? Paid too dear for her experience, I hear some economists say ; half a million is cheap if the Colony will only profit by her errors. I wish my Crusoe friend here again —he of D’Urville’s Island—and a bullock driver. The latter gave me a new name for a c ockatoo farmer, or clodocrat. Are you the inventor of this last phrase ? if so, take Mr Bullock’s instead— i.e., “A Struggle!-.” ’Tis terse, pertinent, easily spelt, and remembered. 1 suppose you call that man where you bought my out-of the-rlbows blue shirt—a Clo’o-crat, anyhow *twas shoddy, hlr Ephock informed mo that some of the << strugglers” had hard times of it. Potatoes and—unless they could catch wild pigs—potatoes. Mr Bullock had just come ov r from Victoria, and was going back again as soon as possible. At shearing time the Settlers would find him work; and at harvest time the “ strugglers,” if they c mid find the money. All the other portion of the year, as a rule, a man could carry his blaukets round, and go from Southland to Nelson, if given to pedestrian habits, looking for work, and finding none. Here mine host chimed in, sajing that years ago, all the winter through, men in shoals were seen carrying their blankets on their back, looking for work. Now none could be seen. Mr Blank, a squatter, asked him one day where all the men were gone, “I told him,” said mine host “that men were not such fools as to find work for six months in the Colony—and n main idle the remainder of the year. They cleared out, when they ha I the means, to a better climate for idle men, and went to Victoria and New South Wales, where work could be got all the year round.” So said mine hogt. Whether his views are correct or not I cannot say ; but the fact remains patent, in Southland there are few swagmen. Mr Crusoe considered the great lack in the country was population; and the gieat evil of those who were in the countiy was their habit of whiskey-drinking. En pemant, our host had just mixed a strong brew of fresh toddy, and he began to moralise in this manner—“ ’Tis all bosh to talk of the poverty of the land. ’Tis our extravagant habits that are our curse. Fellows at Home who were elated to get a pint of small heer, when they come here canjjdrink nothing hut whiskey and Hennessy’s brandy. How can men expect to thrive and prosper, when 250,000 souls pay at retail price some L 1,500,000 per annum for what they can do without. We want to get rid of all old goldfields colonists and their habits, and commence adding bawbee to bawbee,” &c., &c. The whiskey had got into the pedlar’s head, evidently, so we brewed afresh and went to bed. Some thirteen miles from the Elbow-Dip-ton is situated. The L’ipton Hotel is without doubt the best accommodation house on the road between Kingston and Winton. The owner has ceased to take out a license —for what reason, unless another hotel some mile and a half further on less convenient and comfortable has so done, I was unable to learn. Crossing thp Npw Riyer over a jpng broad fprd, afld travelling some seven miles, you reach Morrison’s New Hotel—a good, clean, homely, comfortable restingplace, although built on piles, and below the Oreti’s level. The Oreti, or New River, is rather eccentric in its movements, and occasionally the water covers the floors of the house. To provide against such a mishap there is, however, an upper story, when the river is up. It is uncertain in my mind whether the Orcti, like the Waimakiriri in Canterbury, may not pe - chance returp tp its first love, and some piprpipg the pew house built pn piles he fppnd pn the western instead o' the eastern side of the river. Were I the landlord I should order a whaleboat incontinently and have it slung on davits to my upper chamber windows, to provide against any aqueous contingency that may arise. The railway line passes within half a-mile of the hotel. Some two miles beyond Morrison’s hotel, the “ stragglers" cpiumence, and dot thp country until you arrive at Winton. Here commences the first hush through whiph you pass on your journey to Invercargill. There is a singular feature to , be observed in New Zealand bush, commencing from the Te Anau and embracing the ■whole of the eastern side of the main range t from Mount Luxmore all through the Wakatip, Mcunt Aspiring, Wanaka, McKenzie, Bealey, and Kaikorai country in Marlborough, the prevailing growth— may almost

say entire growth—of the forest is composed of birch of different varieties. The exceptions are the southern parts of Otago and Bank’s Peninsula, in Canterbury. The birch bush is free from undergrowth and can be travelled through with comparative ease, while the bush where the pines and ratta flourish are filled with lawyer, supple-jack, and all the impediments a traveller and the natives so heartily dislike. Altitude has nothing to do with the question, for on the western side of the main range to the timber level, some 3,400 feet above the sea, the vegetation is as rank, varied, and dense as on Catlin’s River, the Hokitika, the Buller, or the Colville Peninsula The West Coast vegetation appears to have spread around the southern portion of the Island, and has jotted itself on Bank’s Peninsula, while towards the range on the Eastern side, birch alone is the prevailing growth. Southland is fortunate in possessing bush land so intermingled with open country. Timber is within easy reach of almost any homestead—and the inhabitants of her plains have not like the people of Canterbury to go fifteen or twenty miles for firewood and fencing. Anyone classifying our native woods would con" fer a general benefit on society. (To he continued.)