WAYSIDE NOTES. (From the Evening Star's Correspondent.)

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 230, 27 June 1872, Page 5

WAYSIDE NOTES. (From the Evenin g Star's Correspondent.)

Now that the fever of Provincial politics is past, you will perchance find room for some more jottings anent men I have met and things I have seen. I intended to have writ* ten no more " Notes," having been in danger of my life by my Clyde transgressions and other verbal iniquities ; but the caeoethes scribendi, like kleptomania, • cannot be repressed, and hence my presont effusion. I knew the zeal, money and Bellamy of Provincialism would have, ere this, afforded me no room in your columns, so I managed to obtaiu, like'our politicians, board and houscn at her Majesty's expense until the busy season was over.

1 went from Clyde to the North Pole, and saw nothing there but snow and ice and the footprints of the seven fallow deer. Men get gold there in the late summer time j but a? I have always been either too soon or too late in my wanderings, I shall leave the de scription of this part of the country to some other Arctic explorer. Instead of wandering among floe ice Jand sperm whales, I gently trotted, in company with a friend, to the Nevis, and give your readers the results of my journey. The Nevis is a Tom Tiddlers in iNew Zealand -a twin brother to the No'fomai.

The Wardens Clerk visits the locality once a month, feeds his horse, and goes back again to the City of the Ironsi es. He is when there a kind of Warden's deputy, or a Simon Pure in small clothes. Not afflicted with mayors or policemen, priests or paupers, having neither a gaol nor a church, the Nevis can only be considered a settlement in embyro. We met a relic of barbarism on the road at a place called the Half-Way House— shilling drinks. I expostulated and paid, and expostulated again— went on my way and found on my return I had not tried to benefit the public in vain, as "the word in season " had fallen on the conscience of the vendor, and made him reduce his tariff some 50 per cent. When you leave the Banuockburn Flat you have a gentle climb of 3,000 feet over what is facetiously call a low saddle. Until I stood on this "low saddle," I could form no idea of tlie geography of the Nevis, when I could take it all in at a glance, and miy describe it thus :— lt is a long glacial valley, some thirty-five miles ia length, heading from the Nokomai Saddle and emptying into the Kawarau, about Edward's Punt. It is separated from Lake Wakatip by the Remarkable Range, from the Bannockfeurn by the Carrick, is a larger stream than the Arrow, and, like the Hollyford, runs nearly north. The glaciers have done their work badly, as there are several gorges in the river-bed which they should have ground down. It is too late, I suppose, to get the process repeated. When you once get on the top of the hill you can understand the meaning of the [proverb, Facilis decendens Averni —it generally freezes there — and the condition of the road may be inferred from the fact that one man was once seen attempting repairs on the Nevis side of the Carrick Range. At the foot of the hill we saw a man thrashing corn, holding the sheaf in his hands, and beating the ears against an empty beer barrel, collecting the corn thus thrashed on a sheet. He being the keeper of a shanty, we of course wanted something to drink ; but as he mistook your reporter for a detective, he informed us we must cross the river to the other side. We there found a long spare bilious melancholic eg an, behind the counter, wearing a large redniqht cap surrounded by all the heterogenous mixings of an up-country store— soap, sardines, gum boots, castor oil, Crimean shirts, sluice forks, and similar ingredients for comessation. He told us the Nevis was gone to the devil ; that the Chinese were spread over the land ; that not content with importing their stores and whisky direct from Dunedin, they had actually the vileness to compete with him at butchering, and retail mutton at threepence per lb. 1 condoled with him and told him for his consolation that pig-tailed humanity could descend no lower than the shambles. He insisted on our having another whiskey, and launched straight into Provincial politics. He had evidently a touch of " Moa Flat Sale" on the brain, and actually had the impudence to assert that Donald and Rip Van Winkle must have had a " tip" from the "big one" to square the transaction. I only repeat the man's meaning in his own nomenclature, and leave it to the wise to understand. He said Mac. was a good whip — but he wanted a heavier thong— and many other things, when I got on my horse and rode away. I found afterwards he was a defeated candidate — and I then learned what the sense of degradation must be to be beaten by the member for Kawaru. I advised him on my return to leave off the red and wear a night-cap made of green, bea r ing a motto like "Erin go brach," "Faugh a ballagh," or some similar national device. He would not then be beaten again I would guarantee.

'Tis four miles from where the man with the night-cap dwells to the township. It stands on. the western bank of the river, surrounded by old workings, and is the most unique thing of the sort your reporter has lately seen. It is a dual town. It contains two houses— no more. They are both hotels, stores, and butchers shops. They appear to have been built and furnished from all the job lots and d. ceased effects in New Zealand. You enter one door and see Dr will see his patients from 10 to 4 ; another that you are entering the Bank of New South Wales ; while one butcher's shop is, I am informed, the remains of some old Methodist chapel. All jthe sardine and kerosene tins in the Colony one would imagine had been collected to cover it in — and such a dismembered arrangement in the way of habitations is a hard thing to be found. The social customs of tho people in the township are also peculiar — they charge their customers nothing for meals or beds when at the hotels — thereby inducing a man to spend 20s, for what should cost him only 10s.

Men in the winter time get on the spree in this dual town, as the frost prevents steady work. It is eminently a good drinking place. Periods of three and six months a c devoted to the process of deglutition, one or more individuals at a time so hibernating. They have no other means of venting their super*

fluous steam : the mailman only visits_them twice a month ; a pedlar never introduces his wares into this remote locality, and a preacher only ventures here when he wants money to buy a new horse or a gown for his sacerdotal half. I advised a Jew pedlar once to try his fortune here, but he shrugged his shoulders, talked of distance, cold, and other evils incident to Nevis life. As a goldfield, it is scarcely touched — scrat hed over ; nothing more. When the rush to thn Weßt Coast first took place, the Nevis was in full work, thmi became deserted, bears a bad name, and has never yet recovered from its desertion, and maligned climate. At the present time it supports a population of about 200 Europeans, and 250 Chinese. Three months during the year miy be the period allowed for frost— and the mining population to spend their earnings, which, as a rule, are considerable, it is impossible to tell the yield of the field, as some of the gold goes to Clyde, some to Cromwell, and some to Switzers. The workings are some thirty-four miles in length a patch here, another there, without connection or continuity. The residents, like on all other goldfields, have an undeveloped and difficult Bat to work — certainly full of water. They j dislike the idea of Government aid at 74 per cent., and have determined to allow the flat to remain unworked rather than to have Government assistance to form a tail-race, like the wise men of Naseby. They appear to be in no hurry about the matter, and have, as they themselves express it, too good a thing at their fingers' ends to allow it to go a-begging. Nearly all the elements necessary to form a large and prosperous set* tlement are to be found on the Nevis. I went there expecting to find a mountain rivulet fenced in by the hills, and found a long, broad river-bed, with a scattered and sparse population, good agricultural land, and [mineral resources scarcely .touched— a place where ten times the population it now carries could be located aud prosper ; where thrifty Norsemen could live and prosper in generations to come, and where grain and general agricultural produce could be grown as well as in Wisconsin or Canada. On the River Flat, at Starkey Town, there are some 4000 acres of available agricultural lavd — 1 mean available for the future generation. There is a similar lot above the gorge, only higher aud colder. A friend of mine wanted to fence and crop some land here, and was made the following liberal offer by the runholdcr. He should fence in the block substantially, take two ciops off it, and then allow it to revert to the lessee. While such liberal offers are rif« for the occupancy of the soil, one can understand why potatoes grow almost alone on this sub- Alpine settlement The best brown coal the Province possesses is to be found on the Nevis. It is all on the eastern side of the river. There are no leases nor rights there ; every man going digging for himself. The supply is practically inexhaustible — only the surface being tested and scratched over. Wood there is none until it is grown ; and acclimatisation societies should learn what kind of trees are beat adapted to plant at high elevations. My visit was a hurried one and the weather wet, or I should have collected more information for you from this almost unknown and neglected locality.