MAKING PETRIFYING SPRING.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 83, 27 March 1883, Page 2

MAKING PETRIFYING SPRING.

Several gentlemen paid a visit to the petrifying spring inthe AJakiuo district last week, the existence of which is but little known, considering that it was discovered over two years since, and is within seventeen miles of Keilding. This, however, is owing to its situation among ravines and hills, such as are scarcely suspected by those who believe the whole district to be a bushy plain. Its reported inaccessibily, except to a bush expert, was of course an extra inducement to our friends, who express themselves highly gratified and well repaid the toil of a sensational scramble up and down wooded cliffs and over boulders and rocks in the bed of the Waituna for several miles. Without a guide it would be impossible to find the place, but Mr James, u> on whose property it is situated, kindly volunteered his services, and the party set out from his house. After a couple of miles through undulating grass lands of magnificent quality, watered by innumerable springs, many of which came to the surface at a considerable elevation, they made tlieir way through pig tracks under the supplejacks for a mile, which brought them to the brink of a densely wooded ravine, at the bottom of which runs a branch of the Waituna stream. The party made their way down this perpendicular cliff by tbe aid of the woody growth which covered it— indeed, were it not for the help of trees it would be im» possible to scale its heigths. The travellers presented a peculiar appearance stringing one behind another through the branches, easy enough no doubt, but with a dash of danger in it to enliven their progress and prevent weariness. Spell ho! in the bed of the creek. Then auother trip up its stream, and, where it deepened, another scaling among the trees on the cliff side, till at last the dead skeletons of stony trees and ferns revealed what they sought. On the face of the cliff, about 80 feet high, the pure cold water trickled from the summit, converting everything it came in contact with to hard yellowish stone, harder than any of the lime formations at Taupo, excepting perhaps the siliceous formations near Rotomahana. M any beautiful specimens were pocketed, but they were badly crushed in the homeward trip, a quarter of a mile of which was actually a climb from the branches of one tree to the stem of the next above it on the cliff. We c innot recommend the trip to other than real pioneer backwoodsmen, and certainly not to ladies, but we doubt not tbat one day in the near future it will be one of the cariosities of the North Island, as the sight, though viewed under the depressing influences of excessive fatigue, and painful scratches by bush lawyers, is really a most beautiful and wonderful one. mm^_ m _^^ mm^ mmmmm