IN THE MAKURI WILDS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5103, 14 August 1895, Page 3

IN THE MAKURI WILDS.

TRAVELLERS' PERILS.

On Saturday morning the driver of the coach to Paliiatua, in trying to cross the Makuri River near the township met with a mishap. The river was high, and the horses lyero swimming, and the coaoh floating, before the passengers who were inside, could realise the danger they wero in. Fortunately the driver kept his presence of mind, and speedily released his horses, which swam safely to the bank. The coach floated clown stream, and finally lodged against a small island in tho middle of the river, where the passengers scrambled out, and after a good deal of splashing, succeeded in reaching the shore, when they proceeded to Pahiatuaon foot, a distance of seventeen miles. The mails floated off en route for the ocean, but wero eventually secured, The driver hopes to get the coach out, without damage, as soon as the flood subsides. TANTALISING, VERY. i Now th it the shooting season is over, pigeons are fat and numerous, and sit on the lower branches of the 1 tre6s cooing pleasantly to sportsmen who pass by with downcast eyes, but i whose ears are aching for tho old ; familiarclick. Awell-knownsports-man got sixty a few days before the . end of the season. THE MASTEKTOH MUSEUM. Those graceful little birds, the Now Zealand fautails, are very numerous i about here. A settler the other day while rabbiting was astonished to observe one with snowy white pjumo, • the first be has seen after forj.y years of biish life. "With thought' of Mr i It, Brown and the Masterton Museujn . he carefully approached and fired, but although the foliage all round . was scattered, tho beautiful Ijttje i bird went flitting about unharmed, t and so excited our friend's sympathy r that he bad nit the heart to fire ' agaifi. Mr R. Brown, however, and the forty pounds he lias oxpended i out of his own pocket, in tho inter- . Usts of natural history and the I Masterton public shall be

'remembered, and the next white fantail or white elephant m find in onr forests ahull be duly eaptured and sent to him. We have, during i our career, liko many others, often beer, done brown, but our experience is reversed when we find wlut Brown done for us. Puketoi.