STRATFORD MOUNTAIN CLUB.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 79, 24 March 1914, Page 8

STRATFORD MOUNTAIN CLUB.

By Alpenstock. Slowly up the mountain path leading from the Stratford House they wended their way amidst the dancing shadowgraph of sunlight. The birds sang in the thickets, the streamlets laughed and glistened, and the air was full of "the fragnyice of mountain shrubs. Five in number, stalwarts all, were these who were the chosen of'the Mountain Club to blaze the trail along the high ridge near the old house-site. Work! Don't make fine speeches about bread but earn it, is their belief, each realising that a. strong and wiso man has ' his strength given to him, not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support and guide them. What better guidance than that' along Egmont's picturesque slopes, breathing the health-giving rariiied atmosphere.; where the truths of i nature are an ,eternal change, and, infinite variety, giving to every time ; and.season some beauty of their own. Soon, in the

hands of these adepts in bush craft, the slashers gleam and the dwarfed and tangled alpine growth severs its connection after a life-time's deep attachment to the mountain's side. Onwards runs .the trail, where golden visions wave and hover high above the magnificent Kapuni Gorge; with landscapes moving, gleaming, changing, steadily they hew their ascent to the highest pinnacle, beneath which is exhibited golden and ; white vapors, waters streaming, moving one to exclaim :— ! '';l

Cry not, faint not, climb the summit's slope Beyond the furthest flights of hope, Wrapt ! in dense clouds from base to copej Clihi'b Mt. Egmont. Assuredly the position was attained where the aimless feet of the discoverers lead: What glorious panorama were revealed to the view:

The foam waves, as they lashed themselves with fury, as they made for the pebbled Waitara beach,, were easily discernible. On the apparent plaeau below, lay Inglewood, Tariki, Waipuku, Manaia and Hawera, the water tower of the latter appearing to the eye in the semblance of Cleopatra's Needle, and in the out,er distance were Tongariro and Ituapehu, and by the dense columns of smoko, old Ngaruhpe's whereabouts was indicated. The whole atmosphere was laden with perfume and sunshine. The birds sing

God sent his singers upon earth With songs of gladness and ol

mirth, That they might touch the hearts

of men And bring them back to Heaven again. -»

This was the thought engendered as one walked along. "The woods were filled so full with song, there seemed no room for sense of wrong." The beautifully plumaged native pigeon sat cooing to his mate on yonder bough. The Tbi's sweet notes reverberated across the Gorge and in mingled harmony with the love calls of the Mountain paraquet. The chirps of insect life in the dense undergrowth, the musical calling of the torn-tit, as he followed from bough to bough by his dear little fluffy off spring who sought the smaller spaces in which to hop, were attuned with the song of the silver eye as he pursued the blue-bottle from shrub to shrub. The orchostralisatioii of all these sweet-throated singers, coupled with the dulcet notes of the mossbirds was a performance Nature alone could achieve, and provided a fitting accompaniment for such a glorious picture.