A DAT ON THE TERRACES.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 712, 17 September 1870, Page 2

A DAT ON THE TERRACES.

(by our ciecumcavabambulating coueespoxdent.) cliapteb iii. poettc feelings. Onions.—Politics.—Glow-wobms Caledonia. —Bunks. Tour correspondent has not yet had the honor of sitting on the bench—in the ordinary and dignified sense of the expression. But he has often been called to the bar, and has sometimes gone there without being specially invited. The temperature in these parts is sometimes oppressively warm, or as oppressively cold, and the quantity of caloric in the human system requires to be changed according to the altered conditions of the atmosphere. Occasionally, and while having a perfect sense of the proprieties, he esteems it a luxury, aa it is often a lesson in life, to occupy a seat on those knife-boards in a public-house bar from which, of an evening, the trotter-man or the oyster vendor is privileged to watch the graceful movements of the fair creature who mixes his grog, or who, in the intervals of business, muses " in meditation fancy free." He likes trotter-men and oyster vendors —in their season, and the graceful fair at all seasons. But they are not to be seen at Smith's— Smith's, of the Junction Hotel, on the Giles Terrace track. On this evening, the sun had subsided into the sea beyond the Steeples; Smith's kye had come hame; his smoking milk-pail stood by the door; and Smith stood by his smoking milk-pail; but there was an incompleteness about the picture which was painful to your correspondent's poetic feelings. The bonnie lassie of the song was wanting. Smith has a bearded chin, and wears b;igs. It would puzzle even Madame Rachel to convert him into a moderately passable female impersonator. There was nothing for it but to drop the poetical, and to accept, as a substitute, the usual and practical result of Smith's " kye coming hame." That is milk—with rum, if you are " so dispoged." An excellent beverage provided the stimulant be of sufficient age and mellowness. As Josh Billings has said, " it dozzent foller that the milk is nasty." But woe betide the unfortunate consumer who in bis travels in this country consents, under the fierce ap petite created by fatigue, to partake, in the disguise of aged Jamaica, of that abomination, amylic alcohol or fuseloil. " To this oil," say the books, " may be attributed many of the ills that men suffer from who indulge in new spirits ; the oil produces a traiu of symptoms beginning with nausea and headache, terminating with delirium, and to its presence has been attributed a large amount of the insanity among the settlers in the Australian bush who imbibe too freely of the newly manufactured spirit." Of course at Smith's you are not sufficiently far in the bush to be provided with other than what is, or ought to be, a safe dilutant of the fresh milk of his home-fed or bush-fed cows. But there are situations on these West Coast diggings where, when the tempter tempteth, you may have tobacco-juice and fusel-oil to your heart's content, and ultimately to your head's distraction. Tour correspondent was lately caught in a snow-squall on a cold hilltop beyond Lake Rotoroa, one of the sources of the Buller. With his companion, he crept into a sheltered corner, and thither came also, shortly afterwards, a packer. The packer carried his own goods, and among the load was detected—of course, by your correspondent's companion —-something which looked suspiciously like a keg in a sack. The more it snowed, and the colder it grew, the more keen became the very excusable interest which was taken'in that sack. It was modestly put as a problem to the packer if he thought there was such a thing as spirits within fifty miles of the spot. Of course there was. There was a keg of rum in that sack ; would that there had been sack in that keg ! You may have seen, in your time, and in the play of Macbeth, three stago witches round a stage cauldron. Here you might have pcoii, in the twinkling of an eye, thr< o bewitched creatures round tho mouth of that sack, and subsequently round the bung-hole of the keg. There was a large amount of patience exercised while four nail 3 piid a jack-knife did the difficult work of drawing that bung, but it was drawn, and tho rum was drawn—in pannikins, of tho uses of which you are probably awaro, when thore ia no cut

crystal handy. The keg, had it not been tapped, would have gone in its entirety to the Maruia, but the inhabitants of that district may be thankful that it met your correspondent and his mate on the way. They thereby had the less to consume of some atrocious abomination—a most evil spirit —" nne sae ill to tak," but internally infernal when taken. No one could possibly adequately appreciate our benevolence towards the mining community of the Maruia who had not, with us, shared in the joy of taking, and the subsequent sorrow of shaking which was caused by thus broaching their supplies. Such stuff is by no means exceptional or rare on the roadside, and, without wishing any other one evil, the partaker may well agree with Cassio that every cup of it, ordinate or inordinate, "is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil." In association with such subjects, accept the testimony of the experienced, Mr Editor, and if you ever carry a swag, either professionally or as an amateur, furnish your swag, not with a flask of fusel-oil, but with a pound of onions. Excuse the homeliness of the suggestion. It is really the fact that, in the bush, either as a source of sustenance or as a stimulant, there is nothing equal to a raw onion. Poets have not sung the praises of that particular esculent, but to the early prospectors of this Province it has often been invaluable. Simple and vulgar as it may be as an article of diet, the onion has had more to do with the discovery of these goldfields than contemptuous humanity may imagine, and certainly much more than ever rum has had. Mr Snob may sneer, but this is fact.

We shall not linger longer at Smith's. It ia too easily possible, in the roadside house, to protract your sitting, and to subside into political controversy. For instance, Jack, or Pat, or some other passing politician gives utterance to his theory as to popular representation, and it is probably this:—"lf I had my way, no man would ever get into a P'vinshal Council or House o' 'Presentives that couldn't handle a pick and shovel." You agree with him, and yet you disagree with him. You admit the propriety of the pick and shovel, but you urge, as a result of your observation, that it would appear to be more frequently necessary, for a representative to know how to handle—a shillelah. You are greeted with ironical applause from the surrounding company, to the discomfiture of Jack, or to the delight of Pat, who by some process of reasoning recognises a compliment to the emblem of his country; and momentary vanity or weakness disposes you to the favorable consideration of that seductive proposition, " Have another." This may be permitted occasionally, but between Smith's and the Caledonian there is a creek which, with a refreshing respect for Nature ou the part of engineers, has been left to do public service as a track. When making the night passage of this creek, it is proper to start with your steering gear in perfect order, and, according to circumstances, to carry a light—the Ballarat pattern will suffice. Otherwise, you may have cause to conclude that, for roughness, the road is a caution to even higher form 3 of life than young snakes. You may have the greatest respect for glow-worms in the abstract; you may be pleased by their beauty, and astonished at their numbers, as they twinkle in the deep shade of this damp gully; but they are not worthy of confidence as guide's over stumps and stones, or as preventatives of shin and knee-cap excoriations. Pretty, pleasing creatures they may be—a specialty among worms ; but you will have reason to prefer the twinkle of the stars above the barren waste intervening between the creek and the Caledonian township; you will have more reason to welcome the lights which emanate from the few apertures that now serve as windows in the township 5 and you will have most reason to relish light and fire when you are brought in closer contact with them in M'Farlane's, or Bruun's, or London's, or M'G-uTs, or Braithwaite's. Whatever may be your landfall in that respect —and most especially if there is a rawness of atmosphere outside suggestive of the " billy'' for tea or t'other it is recommendable that you should rest and bo thankful. _ That infantile phenomenon, " the poetic child," may find a "meet nurse" in the " stern and wild " surroundings of this second Caledonia, and may prefer the " brown heath and shaggy wood " as the scene of his contemillations; but your correspondent, having read of Sairey Gamp, has a wholesome fear of nurses, stern and wild and wet, as the Caledonia would have been on this particular night; to say nothing of his proper regard for the perils of abandoned shafts. In the presenco of a travelled tailingswasher, of a wood-splitter who is a proficient in the use of "wise saws," of a concertina and a cat, there are elements of enjoyment to be found even beside Mr John Braithwaite's bachelor hearth ; and there or thereabouts, under the protection of that gentleman's counterpane and flag, your correspondent remains until the dawn of his second day on the Terraces.