WAYSIDE NOTES.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2676, 14 September 1871, Page 3

WAYSIDE NOTES.

(By our SptrM Reporlrr out for a If olid ay.) c 0 i smarted for Orcpnki. Haropauki. a Maori would call it, but it has been corrupted and shortened like many other native mes in the Middle Island A Maori name properly written, as a rule, is capable of translation into a definite meaning , when altered it loses its significance and W*. Thei e is a good road to Riverton along tbe beach-but being desirous of seeing the country I took the Wallacetuwn track and floundered through the mud towards the town and seapoi t at the mouth of the Apa ritna river. Rivertown is not unlike Queens-town-well built —pleasantly situated- com-pact-and were it not so humid am edd would be pleasant to live in. 1 he whalers of the past have left their mark here-half-castes and quadroons abounding 1 hey arc found in all classes of society and possessed of varied dcgiv es of education all shewing the result of miscegenation in their hands, feet, and eyes, more particularly. Uos mg the river Aparlmaiu a boat, below the jetty. the serious troubles iu your journey to Orepuki commence. The wc stern bank of the stream is densely hushed, the bush here commencing to form continuously, and stretching westward nearly all over the land until the coast is reached. Following the west bank up the stream some hundred chains to a saw mill—a track five miles long, sinuous as a snake, up to your knees in mud. worse than the track from the Greenstone down the Teremakau in Jan. 18bo—leads you to the sandy beach some three miles in length, at the end of which akaik is situated called Opaka. ... Through another hill of hush a mile in length, and we find another sandy bench, at the head of which lies the other Native kaik, called Wakapitu. On both these benches above high water mark, gold has been found, and worked with more or less profitable results ; while the country at the back n simply impenetrable jungle, through which it is impossible to travel without cutting vour way. Some three miles inland, on tbe first beach I passed, some four men are employed sluicing- with what result I cou d not learn—and simply mention the fact to show how extended this auriferous belt ot country is, and to lend a slight confirmation to the assertion of Dr Hector as to the probability of another auriferous area existing between the To Anau Lake and *ouveaux Straits.” In the two kaiks there are resident perhaps some sixty men, women and children, who plant potatoes, catch seal, and fish—and pass away. llirce boats’ crews were waiting for a lair Mind to start sealing-purposing to go west and north as fur as Cascade Point, in the County of Westland. Last year, the Natives informed me they were not fortunate -seventeen men and three boats obtaining in two months onlv 000 seals. The previous year one boat in three months captured 400. Whether their dreams have been propitious or not I cannot say ; but they expect a good cargo this season. Somewhere about Bligh Sound, as near as I could understand from the configuration of the Coast as delineated on the ground before the fire, they kil cd last season eighty-nine seals in one day 1 his was their best day s work. they sell the skins at 10s Gd each ; their last season s oil they have still remaining at Pi vert on, refusing to sell it at 2s Cd per gallon. Seals are more plentiful on the Soutli and West Coasts than on Stewart’s Island ; while the Auckland Islands they consider too far away for their enterprises. Whales were plentiful they told me, but “Go much bother.” It is highly probable, considering the length of time that has elapsed since whale fishing in this locality was systematically pursued, that a favorable opening for the re-establishment of this industry can he hero found._ Some definite information should be obtained on this matter, and the question of our deep-sea fisheries at the same time set at rest. I then had a korrae with them about that large block of country—almost as large as the defunct Province of Southland —situate between the Waiau River and tbe West Coast. It can safely be asserted that this is the only large portion of the Middle Island that remains unexplored. Between the Waiau and Preservation Inlet, they told me there were three or four—l forget which —large streams running into the gea—the largest some 20 miles west of the Waiau—called by the Inropeans the Shag Eiver. They bad never been up the streams or across the country inland —and knew by legend, or any other means, nothing at all about the character of this untravelled block. I also met some miners at Orepuki, who had been some twenty miles up the Shag Eiver—finding no traciof gold after penetrating three miles inland, the country being described as undulating though thickly timbered. The Natives made me a good bed with clean sheets, and having chattered away with them till late of seal catching, of the legend of the wild Maories inhabiting the sounds south of Milford, of having been dtiven there by that old Napuhi chief l-’anparaha, from Mawhera and Matahia, how the canoe that brought their greenstone here should have capsized on Te Hewhera alone—and o her matters dear to Native minds—l felt that I had spent a pleasant evening, and promised to tall on my return. Leaving the Kaik you

go through another belt of bush, sixty chains in width perchance, and arrive at an open plain, where Mr Sutton’s cattle station is situated ; cross this plain, some times up to your knees in water, a distance of five miles ; enter ami pass through another belt of bush two miles wide, and emerging on an open plain, skirting the sea beach, called the Pabees. You will ask the question that was asked in Dunedin by nearly every pirson at the Mining Conference lately held, when Mr Watson, the delegate arrived, “Where is Orepuki. ?” Mr Watson informed me that his Honor the Superintendent and the member for the Lakes, were the only people he knew in town that ever seemed to have heard of the place. Having walked some twenty miles and arrived where Orepuki should be, I asked myself and the first man I met “Where is Orepuki?” “Here” was the. answer I obtained —and looking seaward I caught sight of a gallows-I know how often you have told me I should occupy an elevated position —then a stock yard—next a house - then another, a third and fourth and found I was in Orepuki.