FROM WESTPORT TO NELSON OVERLAND.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 654, 5 May 1870, Page 2

FROM WESTPORT TO NELSON OVERLAND.

THE LYBLL REEF. (FROM OUR SPECIATj reporter.) Mr. Editor, —Permit me to make a few preliminary suggestions. When you again start a special correspondent to the " remote interior," please not to start him, or to let him start, before you are perfectly assured that he is perfectly ready. In particular, be particular about his boots. See that they are neither too old nor too new. Read the Scriptures on the subject of wine and bottles—which latter were, in ancient days, made of leather—and be benefited thereby. A disregard for the easiness of his boots will be culpable on your part; and to him the results maybe most melancholy,according to the tenderness of his epidermis, or the extent to which, in the earlv agricultural periods of his life, he may have cultivated corns. Beginning with his big toe, he may, by some repulsive order of progression—for particulars of which see Darwin—develop into some hideous form of the genus Blister. To the grief of his friends, his enterprise, like others of more pith and moment, may turn awry, and he, in temper, may turn exceedingly nasty. Were it not that you might mistake it for a play upon words, and might believe that I said, it not in all seriousness, I should say that minus good boots, his mission might prove altogether bootless. For a few days before he start, feed him moderately, but well. Let him eschew colonial beer in quantity, and entice him not to partake of that which in infinitesimal doses, is infamous in quality. On the morning of his departure, study his appetite as gaolers and gaol chaplains do study the appetites of distinguished but doomed criminals. Let not his breakfast consist solely, as mine did, of soda-water. See that he had not previously supped solely on sixpenny cigars worth nothing, and colonialmade cognac worth a great deal less. Weep with him, if you will, but wine not. Let him "do his spiriting gently." As his mission involves questions of muscle and lungs, let him have a short course of reading relative to Harris and Hewitt, and give him a round with the gloves ; they are admirable substitutes for the stethoscope. Speak to him like a Polonius, and act to him like a father. Put a ten or twenty pouud note in his pocket, and present him with a spare pair of socks for his poor feet. Kiss your favorite bar-maid " for his mother." Accept his paper collar as a token of his regard, and of his temporary abandonment of all the amenities of civilisation. And having departed him—which is an American neologism made at the Lyell—measure not his miles by the map or the distance-table of the almanacs, for there be hills and bogs, and things too numerous to mention which, as you sit at home at ease, enjoying the cud or the " kids " of domestic bliss, are not dreamt of in your philosophy. Have great faith as to the contemptible quantity of correspondence which you will receive, and verily you shall not be disappointed. Believe, as I tell you, that he that expecteth nothing will receive lots of it.

These, Mr Editor, are a few ridiculous reflections which tame into your humble servant's head as the mass of adipose tissue extending therefrom to his sadly fatigued feet lay stretched upon a sofa in Sloan's hotel, Lyell township, after four days of the hardest walking that the said feet had undertaken for a long time before. I hope they satisfy you. They were intended as the beginning of a series of moral reflections, more or less ridiculous, which were certain to suggest themselves duriDg a solitary and weary walk from Westport to Nelson. They were inserted in my note-book, as a sort of sherry-and-bitters for you before you should have to partake of the heavy diet of practical observations on reefing which I had prepared for you during a two days' visit to the Alpine Reef, up the Lyell; and they were succeeded by many more notes of an equally discursive character which you might have taken as cheese to this diet

of practical observations, or as any other condiment which you may be in the habit of patronising. Unfortunately for you, Sir, a misadventure overtook these notes and your most humble and contrite servant. They came to a premature but probably a deserved end. They were sacrificed at the shrine of Necessity. They were made the material of a burnt-offering to the human instinct of Self-Preser-vation. Crushing descriptions of scenery which almost exhausted the dictionary of its adjectives—records of administrative remissness the possession of which might have made my life unsafe at the hands of the Nelson Executive —a nautical log of soundings taken during the voyage on the Buller road —memoranda of many" things most worthless, no doubt—all these, with the paper which contained them, were made matches of, in the unfortunate absence of a sufficient supply of the article from Bell and Black. To speak less figuratively, Jack Dogherty and I and two horses got both bogged and bushed up the Matakitaki river one dark and rainy night. You don't know Jack, perhaps. He is a little fellow, but "game," and knows a bullock. Bub he doesn't know, any more than I do, where to find six-to-tbe-pound candles in the bush, these luxuries not being available, like manna, in the desert; so he and I burnt all the pocketsful of papers we had about us, first to get out of the bog and then to prevent our Rosinantes and ourselves from falling over precipices which do there abound. It was a discovery also that a little bit of burning paper added picturesqueness, if not cheerfulness, to the scene as we sat, smiling at our own grief, in the midst of mud and water, with saddles over our heads as a slight substitute for the shelter-shed which the Government had failed to provide at that particular spot. The reporter's best assistant—his note-book —had to be burnt with the rest, and, memory being a treacherous and lazy servant, it is compulsory,'on me to compromise with you by sending, meantime, some notes relative to the Lyell reef only, for these I preserved. At another time you may get some memoranda of the surroundings of the sources of the Buller, of the circumstances under which they were seen, and of the remarkable places and people which are to be encountered in a journey overland. Tou may.

THE LYELL TOWNSHIP. The Lyell is not a river. It is a creek—a little creek. By the miner it would be estimated, during ordinary circumstances, as containing just a few Government heads of water. By your correspondent it was estimated as just being big enough, in one or two places near the township, to, afford a comfortable, if somewhat cold bath of a morning. But when the rain falls, as it can fall sometimes in these parts, the peculiarities of the country through which the Lyell runs assist the rain in converting it into a roaring mountain torrent compared with which even the rush of water in the Buller seems subdued. Running in a narrow course by the foot of high hills, and stemmed by the Buller, it often rises forty feet, and roars in proportion. Its outlet is narrowed by a steep rocky spur which is most precipitous on the side next the Buller. On the creek side of the spur there is some slightly sloping grouud, and upon this slope is built the small township of the Lyell. The township as seen from the ferryhouse on the opposite bank of the Buller, consists solely of Sloan's hotel, and Sloan's hotel is a little snuggery such as you do not see or enter, either before or after, during the whole journey from Westport, until you reach the order and civilisation of the Nelson side, first represented at the head of the Motueka Valley by Mr M'Farlane, his house, and his probably significant signboard " Let Glasgow Flourish." Built of galvanised iron, and situated on the summit of the spur, Sloan's small house is prominent, and, amid the sombre surroundings of dark greeu bush, rather pretty. But it does not constitute the entire township. When you have been ferried across the Buller by Joe Sullivan—a competent boatman of continental birth and of unpronounceable name which his wife and friends have thus abbreviated, regardless of the feelings of his mother and his country—you ascend a steep sideling, and enter the township proper. Excuse for a few sentences the language of the showman. Tou see before you the main street of the town. It is at least thirty paces in length. To the right you behold the store formerly kept by Mr Florian Adank, and now in charge of Mr M'Lean, for Mr Patterson and others at Westport. Beyond it stands the store of Mr Andrew Todd. First on your left is the shop of Mr Louis Pensini—a most excellent man and butcher. Skilled in the use of the knife, and liberal in the exercise of hi 3 hospitality, he is an ornament to the place and his profession. His neighbor is a " snob " —an estimable cordwainer who amiably accepts this name as the proper English name for the representatives of his trade. He adjoins an empty house which, when your correspondent was previously at the Lyell, was a busy little store, but in the interval there has been a declension iu trade, such as, he imagines, the Lyoll is not likely to suffer from again. In front and upon the street hue, if the township should " go ahead," and be surveyed, stands the store of Mr James Ryan, and inside of it, sound in his native proclivities, if

not upon his native heath, stands one whose name's Montgomery. Behind it are scattered some houses and tents —the nucleus of the architecture which may yet adorn the terrace which extends thence along the creek side. Turn you to the right, and you ascend another sloping and sometimes sloppy sideling, and pass if you please, or just as you please, a house with a fair occupant whose name I forget; then an untenanted tenement of a shoemaker whose name was " Schneider ;" then the empty hut of a brief-lived news-agent, Charley Cohen; then " Peter the Greek;" and then you enter Sloan's. And now—having brought you thither do as I desire to do —Refresh yourself. The road to the reef, the reef, and the road home again form fair matters for another chapter, and for serious and respectful reference. THE ROAD TO THE REEF. One's first instinct, after refreshment, is to inquire of the landlord how far it is to the reef, and in what direction lies the road thereto. He takes the anxious inquirer to the gable of his house, and points to a series of spurs or mountain sides which form the western watershed of the Lyell creek. He points to the biggest and most distant of these, and indicates a spot somewhat near the clouds as the probable height to be attained and the distance to be overcome. He subdues one's exaggerated notions as to the distance by stating that it is only two miles and nine chains ; but be not deceived thereby. No doubt he may be literally and actually accurate, for he measured the track by tape, but consider always the difference between walking two miles up a ladder and walking the same distance on a horizontal plane. After an intimate acquaintance with the road, I venture to say that any of your readers would, for the same money, prefer to walk six miles of decent road than climb these two. I speak from experience. "If anyone doubts my word," let him go and do likewise. How men can, for month after month, wearied with working all the week, and with hope deferred making the heart sick, carry back burdens of mining materials and provisions over these hills as a species of Sabbath rest, must be incomprehensible to anyone who has not read and believed that "by faith you may remove mountains."

I started with little Willy Sloan, the host's son, as the best available Alpine guide. As an index of his ability as a gymnast, and of the poor effect which my superior personal appearance, but inferior lungs, produced upon his juvenile mind, let me relate a conversation. After we had left the reef, he must have detected, from animated exclamations as to its richness, and from declamatory denunciations of Provincial Councils and all such vanities and vexations of spirit, that his companion was suffering slightly from " reef on the brain." He hinted—- " You'll be back here again soon, won't you ?" I said sternly, and in relation to the baduess of the road. " Not if I know it; I prefer to do my walking or. well-made streets." I hope I forgive him for the look of contempt which he assumed when he answered —" Pooh ! Anybody could do that." I caved. Well, in charge of this noble young person, I went on my way to the reef. For the first half-mile or more, the track is on the right-hand side of the Lyell, going up, and it is a fair sideling till you reach a low spur formed by a sharply dipping reef of slaty rock. This is in the vicinity of a place known as the " Maori bar," where rich pockets of gold were picked in times gone by. I cross the creek by a log which spans the stream, and the intelligent guide introduces me to what he indicates to be the continuation of the track. It seems to be standing on its end, with a slight tendency to overhang, but it has to be mounted, if the journey is to be made, and ultimately it is accomplished, after a free use of lungs and language. The existing difficulty of this portion of the track could, however, be easily overcome, by the construction of zig-zig sidelings—provided always that this is the route which the engineers would select. Having ascended the spur we follow a narrow table-land till we reach a sideling on the shady side of the range. The sideling becomes steeper and softer, and we became weary and wet, but we are gratified by occasional glimpses of the wide expanse of Manuka Flat—once a grand old lake—and of the row of ranges which form a magnificent outline on its eastern side. We are scarcely less gratified by hearing the barking of a quadruped whose voice my friend Young William recognises as that of " Davie's dog," and in a few minutes we are made grateful by a hospitable invitation from Davie himself and from his mate, Tom Blair, who pipe a duet from their hut some distance below in the welcome words " Come down and have something to eat." Tom and Davie are the representatives of the holders of claim No 2 south, and they had just finished the clearing of the ground, the construction of their hut, and the driving of the first few feet of their tunnel.

We eat. And on this subject let me say something. Mutton, preceded by potato soup and followed by tea and a few whiffs of twist, is, no doubt, delectable diet. But everv rose has its thorn. Abd the metaphorical thorn in this case is the consideration that all this " tucker " has to be borne on the backs of men along the track over which we had just succeeded with difficulty, in dragging our poor bodies

more in the condition of a mass of perspiring pulp than in the proper semblance of the noble human frame. For the two days I was on the ground, I was the recipient of the hospitality of the prospectors, and owe them an apology for the shocking appetite which I exhibited. Like Macbeth, when the words of prayer hung upon hit: lips, I should have been consciencestricken, and apostrophising a potato, have ordered it to stick in my throat rather than be swallowed after the sweat of other brows. However, they oweyourcorrespondent an apology also for encouraging him to drink so much tea at unseasonable hours, thereby disturbing his natural rest, and leading him into flights of imagination the very mildest of which was that he was Alladdin and that their tunnel was the golden cave. But, seriously, if visitors to the reefs become numerous, they should also, from the considerations which I have mentioned, become their own providores. The track by which we had come, it i» calculated, could be made a bridle track for £3OO or less. The original track by which the ground was reached is shorter, and may prove preferable. There is also a possibility of bringing a track from the Newton, which enters the Buller two miles below the Lyell. But their relative merits are questions to be settled by experience and engineers. In the next chapter we shall reach the reef.