LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 199, 28 January 1875, Page 3

LOAFER IN THE STREET.

On the Crops of the West Coast. (From the Press.) You will probably be surprised at not receiving my report on the above before. The fact is, I'm not a cropster. I only attempted to rai?e a crop on one occasion. It was a hair one, and I used oxide of copper. It was a failure. I expect that crop would only run about four hairs to the acre, and from a well matured experience of the process 1 prefer being bald. My articles are much the same. They are very bald. My friends often tell me so. I wish to explain to you at the outset that this review of the West Coast cereals will be more or less incomplete This arises from the fact of my having left my voluminous and valuable notes in the hands of a literary gentleman on the other side for revision. He has not forwarded them to me On telegraphing to him on the subject, he wires back as follows : "Notes gone by mistake for a wool bale to Nelson. Send us that pound you borrowed." To exchange further communications with that man would be only degrading to myself. I Bhall have to depend on my memory in respect of the cereals. I'm sorry for this because you nefer saw anything like those notes before, and I feel sure you never would again. In proceeding* to the Coast, you start from the Clarendon. Mr Cassidy, one of the proprietors of the line, drives. He has been called, by a gentleman who has recently visited the Coast, and has published a very good account of his trip, Cassidy the Judicious. I beg to add the Jolly. The J. J. works his line well. It is uncommonly well horsed, and if the passengers don't have a good time it is not his fault. We hear occasionally of the dangers of the road, but it is enough to say that neither Mr Cassidy, who drives on this side,nor Miiher, who drives on the other, has ever had an accident of any sort yet, and their time is usually good enough to set your watch by. The West Coast Road is not remarkable for much, except a much required breakfast at Morgan's, until you get to Kowai. I observed many smiling homesteads, flourishing crops, and gorse bodges, the latter standing in bold relief against the sky. It, reminded one of England. I mention this fact because " re minding one of England" is a beautiful card for any stranger to play coming to Cbristchurcb. When I was a stranger hero, I lvliere it kept me on drinks for a week, and came very nearly getting me a Government appointment into the bargain. The township of Kowai calls for no special comment. ' There is a train, which, I understand, runs at hours remarkable for the'r inconvenience to the general public in those parts. I wont commit, myself on this point, because much as my open heart gushes towards the Kowai people, it don't gush to that extent that I should in volve myself with the Railway Management on their account. A deputation of Kowais to the General Manager might make the desired alteration. If the district has a grievance against the Railway, it has nothing against the Post office officials. There are five post offices in five miles. They must like correspondence up there. They must be fonder of getting bills than lam. I shouldn't care if I never received a letter again in' the. whole course of my life. After passing Redfern's, we come to the river Kowai, and then a long up-hill drag to Porter's Pass to old George's, where we dined. I apologise to this landlord for calling him old George, but nobody calls him anything else, so far as I could learn. His repasts are fgood, everything very clean, and his attendance most assiduous. I never saw such an assiduous landlord in my life. We had lamb to eat, and rare appetites to eat it with. The moments Icept fleeting, and the lamb kept fleeting too, and the kind countenance of that good old host kept loosing its beams, beam by beam as that lamb kept passing away. He recovered a momentary presence of mind when he brought in the Christmas pudding, which was extra good, so good that it faded away like snow before the summer sun, and then he lost confidence in ns altogether, and he retired sadly. We paid up and parted. The road ascending the Pass is steep and sinuous, but good. Supposing the Southern Alps to be a bottle, this road would make a grand corksorew for it. You travel down this shop at a good rattling pace. On the wrong side is a precipice of say 400 feet. I have remarked before, I can't bear falling down things like this. Any fellow who wants to fall over 100 feet on to a strata of either limestone or basalt is a geological glutton But there's no danger about it with good horses and good driving. On the other side the descent is not so startling, and we pass through Starvation Gully, skirt Lake

Lyndon, cross the Porter, the Thomas, and come to Castle Hill. Here the formation is very curious. The lie about in all shapes and in all directions. It looks as if some giant, had taken a contract for a variety of castles, pulpits, pillars, and figures, found it wouldn't pay, and left for the West Coast. It's all good stone for building. Burgess' accommodation bouse close by is bultof it. Its a massive building- A friend of mine who fell against it nose first says its one of the most massive tenements he ever encountered. On the hill close by is the home station of the Messrs Kny's, embosomed in trees, shadowed by the prey mountain, and with the Broken River flowing under it, it is indeed a pretty place. We cross the Broken River to the Makanni, and another beautiful stream, with the festive name of Murderer's Creek, and then up the <'raigieburn Hill, the descent of which is one of the finest parts of the whole road. After leaving Craigieburn head sta tion we skirt Lake Pearson. It begins to rain. It makes up its mind to rain more and does it. I am wet, and get more and more insensible to Alpine scenery. At last we. reach the Cass accommodation housp, kept by Mr Searle, ard a house that would shame many Christchurch hotels in point of drawback to the establishment, however, and 1 mention it to make visitors cautious. The occupants of one bed-room can bear the conversation of the occupants in the next. I heard one gentleman say that for pure honest dreariness and for unmistakeable drivelments no New Zealand writer could touch me. This was the least comic of my experiences on the road. It only shows how sad a . thing it is to /vrite for the papers, I shall have to make you a slight extra charge for this bitter blow, but I feel you won't mind it. We start from the Cass at 5 a.m. I may state that Mr Cassidy is not related to the Cass. He comes of a different family. Starting at 6 a.m. is a mournful proceeding. We make a lively start of it though, Tommy Maher, the driver who hs.s charge of our precious necks, ascends the box, the groom lets go, and the horses make a series of eccentric prancements. Mail horses always will do it. I can't understand why it should be so, but so it is. Take a middle-aged hearse horse, say of twenty-nine years of age, and run him a week in a stage coach, and he curvets. He will play up these foolishments at starting like a colt. Seems curious, don't it. We pass along some rare sidlings. There is a fall of about—say 3000 feet on one side of us. You can knock off one cipher if you like, but it looks better in print as it is. I am on the side furthest from the smiling precipice,. I feel pleased at this. I decide if the coach should elect to go over the abyss, that I shan't race any one to the bottom. I feel that I should not be able to write such a good local about it as if I remained on the top. We get along all right to Powers' Here we exchange the compliments of the season with Mr Burchell, who has been sketching in the neighboihood, and pick up two pedestrian savants on a tour to the Coast. We hurry up because its rainiDg hard, and there seems a fair chance of the Otira being high. We cross the Waimakiriri all right, and then work up the Bealey river bed. It will be a great improvement when the new road, at present in course of construction, is finished, because shiagle is monotonous, especially to a fellow accustomed to the Christchurch streets. The hills on each side are covered with timber. I gaze at them till I am conscious that the rain is flowing peacefully down my chest, and then I don't look any more, but sit and think about the scenery, and let the rain flow down my back for a change We now ascend the Gorge. I don't feel quite equal to describing it. I'm vexed about it, because, you see, just when we were getting into the most beautiful part of it, a silvery, a sort of German silvery second-hand mist, came meandering over the hills, patrolling the glens, and enveloping the great cliffs and giant trees with a cloak. Perhaps you won't believe me when I tell you that when I arrived at the West Coast I wrote the finest description of that Gorge that ever was written. There's been a good bit of word painting slung about over this place, but none like mine. The editor of the West Coast Times says that a more imaginative piece of descriptive writing he never came across. He offered me 15,000 Tramway shares on the spot for it. On my return through fhe gorge, however, I found that it was not exactly like what my fancy had painted her. Home months ago a few .young mountains residing on the olhcr side of the pass took a fancy !o go down into the valley. On their road they carried away a portion of the track, and then found they could not get back again. Since then a big fresh occurred and swept those young mountains hither and thither down the river, and took the bridges and left them in trees and places. On this account you have to ride from the top of the pass down the gorge to the accommodation house, the coach being left on the top of the pass. The pass its-lf is a wild place. The white post which marks the boundary between Westland and Canterbury is a ghostly-looking article ; the lonely little tarn close to it looks as if it had broken down on its way to the diggings. A funereal looking crow, on the look out for his weekly meal, flaps wei'dly and it is not a lively place on a rainy day; on a fine day it is otherwise. Yon don't think of anything but the ever-varying scenery which meets you at every turn of the road. I suppose you can meet scenery can't you, but I shall get mixed if I'm not very careful; and if Mr Hoyt or Mr Burchell would only let me supply my descriptive parts by sketches of their owd, it would be perhaps more satisfactory for all of us. The mountain lilies and daisies are very beautiful, but assuming that I were insane enough to " would I were a daisy," I should prefer daising somewhere else. I guess I should weary of the monotony of grandeur there is about the Otira Gorge. I'm not used to grandeur. I shall refer to this again presently. Meantime I may say I have seen the Yosemite Valley, the Himalayas, the Alps, and the Andes—in photographs—and so far as I am in a position to judge, the Otira can pretty well bold its own wtth any of them. We leave Tommy Maher and bis assistant Cox, who meets him on the top of the hill rigging up the paok.horse, and arranging things generally. We are requested to hurry on, and if possible cross the, river on the planks provided for that purpose. We hurry on accordingly, but plank No. 1 does not seem feasible. We wait for the horses, and cross. The river is rising fast, and in spite of our attempts to hurry up more by the time we reach the next crossing it is too high to attempt it. It rains hard, and we are between the two streams, the savant in charge of the whiskey flask has lost the cork, and there is very little left. It is one

of those exceptional cases in travelling which is pleasanter to read about. We build a fire and warm ourselves. A ladv who is of party behaves admirably, but I have reason* to believe we should all been livelier had we been able to see our way to a meal. I'm fond of meals. We were in the midst of lovely scenery. Picturesque waterfalls, towering crags and ferns, and mosses of ali sorts, and yet there was not that rapturousness about our appreciation of it that might have been expected. You recollect Mungo Park. He got off the track once and felt bad on it, very bad. He felt he was indeed a stranger in a strange land, but at this moment, painful as Irs feelings were, the extraordinary beauty of a small moss caught his eye. Ht started up. and, disregarding hunger and fatigue, went ahead successfully I saw tons of beautiful moss, but they never produced the same effect on me. I expect Mungo was differert from me. I kept on examining the delicate structure of this moss just the same as Mungo, but the only conclusion I could arrive at was that I should have liked it better had it been edible. I may do him great injustice, but I've lost faith in dear old Mongo since then, and if you think gazing on a nice moss will do ycu good when you want a square meal, you can try ic yourself. The rain at last stops, the river goes down, and Tommy thinks it time to cross. I cross on a plank. I step on in my usual daring style; the water is foaming underneath, tearing among the boulders just the same as it comes down at Lodore, you know. I reach the middle. I scarcely feel so daring as I did, my foot slips, and To be continued soon.