DREARY PLACES.

Southland Times, Issue 551, 31 August 1866, Page 3

DREARY PLACES.

An individual of an unhappy temperament, who has evidently no appreciation of the value of mineral wealth or of magnificent scenery, suggests that the following remarks are not inapplicable to some parts of the "West Coast, Tbey are extracts from some " Jottings about tbe Huon," by a lively sketch writer in the " Australasian " : — " There are certain parts of this vale of tears, which we should personally feel inclined to call a vale of smile 3, that puzzle one as to tho reason why human beings should like to live in them. Charles Dickens tells us of a seedy but sensible barrister, on his promotion, who in his utterly lonely chambers saw a ghost, who told him to " get out of this," as the chambers were his, since he had there cut bis throat. Certainly, sir,' remarked the inmate ; ' but as you gentleman ghosts can go anywhere, why do you stick about such dreary places ?' ' Queer,' said the ghost, striking a phantom hand on a phantom forehead, ' I never thought of that ; we are stupid fellows — very stupid fellows,' and vanished. Now that was just what was running ia our heads on waking up at Port Esperance, and, though looking over oueof the most wonderfully beautiful sheets of water the Almighty has created, and looking back at one of the most graceful of mountains, still there was the sensation 'why do civilised Christians come and live in such places, when they can, if tbey like, go and do it elsewhere ?' For the Australians are not Russians. If they were we could understand it. Upon the whole, we think that the most interesting book upon travels, except Anson's Voyages, is the Russian Admiral Wrangel's Travels in Siberia, when he tried to reach the North Pole on sledges drawn by dogs over the ice. During his desperate struggles of three years he lived among a set of people at the Nishnei Ivoleyma, where the glass was one day 71 ° "under Zero, and 6ne-fifth of the people died of starvation and the typhus fever. Tbis was nothing irregular, but tlie normal state of things. Why do the people do it, and don't Avander away ? Simply because they are under the Russian Government, and have to ask j permission for wandering. So they have to stop and die. That case is intelligible enough. But we could not help thinking, gloriously beautiful as the scenery is, how can civilized beings go and stick down at such out-of-the-way places as about the lower Huon, to convert themselves into moral cabbages. Eor wandering out smoking early a cigar tbis is what we saw for two hours : — (1) a cow — N. 8., a particularly bad one ; (2) three horses, worse; (3) a very pretty little girl, who said her name was Susan ; (4) seven horrible little boys talking unutterable abominations, though the eldest could not have been more than twelve; and (5) a pig. Now for one day one could stand this, "but how for a quarter of a century? Why a man must grow into a zoophyte, or an oyster, or a sea-blubber, or any impassive marine anomaly you like. Thus we thought as we looked at the face of our intelligent host at the very early breakfast, and at last asked the question. ' Well,' he said, ' I hold with the Yankee, there is nothing new and there is nothing true, and it don't signify ; nor dees it where one is or Avhat one is.' And he added that he liked the 'place very mueb. _ Looking at hjs face we saw that he was sincere, and, after all, began to believe that Robison Crusoe was not the enormous though most able lie that we had taken it to be, and that we could have got on very well on Juan Eernandez, even with Man Friday, but, upon the whole, should have preferred a pretty wife."