AN ELUSIVE MOUNTAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 276, 14 April 1913, Page 3

AN ELUSIVE MOUNTAIN.

, . <d —: j A TRIP TO Jit;MONT. I (By a recent visitor.) I ligmont, like Mt. Blanc, must surely have "some (.•luirm to stay tlie morn in'g star 111 hU steep course" if his height and grandeur count for anything. By tlie way, why is a mountain always "he" and a ship "she"'; Jivcn the wisdom of Solomon has not evolved an 'answer to this proposition. Of course the poor old chap is dead—long dead—hut had ho lived to-day lie would have added Mt. to his "three things, maybe four," which are the accepted types of the inexplicable. "The way of a serpent upon tlie rock, the way of a ship upon tlie sea, and the way of a man with a maid." Now, a.s a visitor in your midst I want to add the fourth, and that is "the way of Mt. ligmont with the compass." Some days it lies due northeast from New Plymouth, and other mornings is away down sou'-west. From Stratford it is generally east by west i'.y north by south. Then when you get to a place called Pihama or Kaponga, or some strange Jjitin name of that sort, it isn't there at all: it has shifted some more times. After a week's experience of this elusive mountain, my own opinion is that it waits until tlie shades of night have fallen and then creeps quietly away in the darkness co some fresh coign of vantage. We all remember as children how we were taught that there was a crock of gold at the foot of the rainbow if we could only reach it. But for elusiveness, Mt. hgmont can give the average rainbow

fifty points in a hundred up and lose it. As a matter of simple fact, the only thing one can he sure about is that it is in Taranaki. and that Taranaki is justly proud of it. The other day a party of us set out from Stratford determined to run that hill to earth, even if we had to go to Opunake or Kakaramea or Whangamoturoa, or some other profanely-sounding settlement. Fortunately the motoi° man knew something and he stalked it ni most admirable stvle. There was 110 rushing straight at it. The car, with an almost noiseless purr, eat up the long white ribbon of road just as a spring tape measure gathers in the inches when My Lady lias settled the depth and breadth of the flounces of her petticoats. By sinuous ways and with devious craft we crept through patches of bush and nestling townships, through creeks and gullies, by hill and dale, through flood and field, until success was ours and we caught the monster sleeping. • 1

Serenely clear lie towered, belted .with the green girdle of the virgin bush and with the tenial snows grizzling his forehead at the temples, whilst the fleeciest of gauzy clouds wrapped themselves a round the distant slopes in a .white purity that it was almost a sacrilege to gaze at. I don't know of any sight more impressive in the world. That mountain of yours seemed to nurse somewhere in its dark bosom the history of the ages. It was an inspiration and a poem, and a dream and a lesson all in one. One could almost have envied Ixion his task of perpetually rolling his wheel to the top of a hill 'had Egmont been selected as the scene of his operations. And Ah of the Sell ulites, who slept ever on the hill-tops because he was "safer by being nearer God" ought surely to have lived in Taranaki, where his "garden of sleep" would inevitably have been Egmont. But down to earth from the Empyrean height. Swinging its way quietly into | the magnificent forest reserve, the car staited on a steady climb to the mountain house through an avenue of bush that, was indescribably beautiful and indescribably weird. This is "the forest primeval, the bearded pines and the hemlocks" of Evangeline, but instead of pines and hemlocks the road toads up lull all the way through an ever-vary-ing vista of fern and foliage. I don't know the names of your native trees, but there are some of the hoariest old veterans that I have ever seen in four continents. Grey-bearded old satyrs they are, clad in, n rough garb of lichens I and moss, and ivy and lianes. and looknig as if they knew and had known for ages everything that is worth knowing in the world. And underneath, the lush grass and the fern, rioting in the almost wicked profusion of growth that per- .

,ain * Taranaki. readied out tender green fingers to cover the nakedness of old age and make dancing p] : i t( >s for the Unies and the elves who. even in a new 1 country, must haunt these svlvan glades. Then to the Dawson Falls, slow-drop-ping thinnest veils of gauziest lawn over ■Y e °t rot 'k '"to a trenmloiis, whispering pool below. Then oil' to Psyche's close at hand. There is no Psyche those woodland nymphs never materialise in their diaphonons finery in this materialistic age-but the bath with its rushing, talkative torrent is still there to prove emphatically that there once was a 1 syche, although her address has long since been lost. But these stimulating exercises called of'tlil' 1 • attpntion to the requirements ot the inner man. which kindly hostess Diamond, of the Club Hotel, had made excellent provision for. and an adjournment was made to the Dawson' Falls louse, a cleanly and comfortable structure which is admirably managed and where there is every possible convenience for the tourist-including an unpara leled view of the Waimate Plains which was not artificially constructed by either the Mackenzie Government or the Massey (lovornniont And over it all brooded the shadow the eternal mountain maiestie eaeeful, perfect guardian of one of the | Rttiest and yet most solemn beauty J? ? f a country that the Creator has blessed wonderfully i, the largesse of such gifts that his hands have scattered «« widely m all comer* of this "best of all possible worlds."