ARCHIBALD FORBES ON THE ROAD TO THE BEALEY.

Kumara Times, Issue 2584, 3 October 1884, Page 3

ARCHIBALD FORBES ON THE ROAD TO THE BEALEY.

Archibald Forbes in the English Illustrated Magazine, gives some of his Hew Zealand experiences. The description of his journey from Springfield to the Bealey is rather sensationally written, and somewhat overdrawn. He writes:— We had lost time somewhere, and the short southern gloaming was about us, when the driver quietly muttered, as we turned sharp round a corner, “I don’t like the Waimakariri Gorge after sundown.” It is with every emphasis that I record my assent to this expression ; and yet when it was all over I was not sorry that the experiment had befallen ns. We went at a hand-gallop on a track jnst wide enough and no more, for our three leaders abreast. About 500 feet sheer below—sheer except in places where the cruel jagged craggs reared their horrid heads—roared .and boiled the furious torrent of the Waimakariri Fiver. One could just discern through the gathering gloom, the deep blackness of sullen gloomy pools alternating with the dingy white of the tor i; red rapids writhing their vexed cun sc through the rocks that impede the river-bed. Above us towered a bverli-tg crag wall as high, where the epe c-und catch "i's fkv-lhv?.

as the drop on the side next the river was deep. But this was only in places ; for the most part it actually overhung us, and the narrow road was notched of its looming face. It overhung worst at the sharp bends of the road, as it followed the curves, the projection, and the indentations of that serrated precipice. Not once, but often, the leaders as thay galloped round a turn were clean out of our sight, and there was but the point of the pole projecting over the profound, ere as yet the wheelers, urged close to the verge that the wheels might clear the projecting buttress, complied with the sharp bend, borne round on their haunches by the driver’s strong left arm. His attention was concentrated on his work, but once he spoke, and I had rather he had hold his tongue. “Do you see those dim white specs on the fiat top of that crag below us ? Those are the bleached bones of some horses. They were pasturing on the upland above ns, when a sudden scare sent them over the precipice. They fell clear outside the road without touching it, and brought up where you see their bones down there.”