A SCRAMBLE UP TE AR0HA MOUNTAIN. [By our Travelling Reporter.]

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1386, 21 May 1881, Page 3

A SCRAMBLE UP TE AROHA MOUNTAIN. [By our Travelling Reporter .]

Tti Anon \, or " The Mountain of Love," is a very respectable hill to travel up to anyone who may derhe satisfaction from the feeling of being some 3000 feet aboie the lex el of common humanity. Any high-spintcd individual who felt Ins daily biead moie enjoyable if ILvored with a little harmless brag to the charmer on the other side of the dimiei -table might be gratified by such a climb, or, perhaps, by part of it and the rest taken for granted, or the lover of a really fine prospect might toil all the way up for the sake of looking over a landscape some seventy or a hundred miles in extent, though he would ser quite enough, if not farmoie, of fascinating little tit-bits of tiie great picture if lie stayed down on the flat and studied it in detail. I can't see the use of going up a hill only to come • down auain, or of undei taking a task merely foi the .sake of saying it has been done, and I am unable to imagine how I was led astray by my good nature, or my ieeble-minded \anity, so far as to offer to accompany a torn ht in these paits who wanted to make a terrific ascent of the mountain if he could find anyone fool enough to go with him. For a man going down the hill of life and falling into the sere and yellow leaf to make attempts to go up mountains, or exhibit his powers in athletic exercises, is an act of misdirected energy, to say the least of it, if not of drivelling idiocy that deserves punishment and humiliation, and I feel as much refreshed in admitting that I got all I deserved, as if I were administering ten dozen to my own back and roaring peccau all the tune. However, though I have registered a most solemn pledge to be a bettei boy in future and never do it again, I did go up there, and I may as well describe what I saw as any of the other sights to be seen around this district. Te Aroha is the highest point of a very noble-looking range of densely wooded hills, broken by tremendous gullies, with one peak rising softly behind another and mellowing away into a distant blue perspective. » Distance always lends enchantment to the view here, or as I have found it with Mount Blanc, Mount Cook, Mount Egmont, or any other of the beauties of Nature, down to a lovely woman, for too near a familiarity only reveals the liideous ruggedness of the broken sides, or the carefully puttied and rouged And powdered wrinkles ag the case may be. It is not the climbers of mountains who perceivp the beauties of their scenery. Just at the back of the diggings the range juts out into a peculiarly cantankerous looking 1 , nearly perpendicular hill of about a 1000 feet in height with two or three sharp narrow spars running down into the plain by which one has to scale the first step in the ladder of the ascent of Te Aroha. I did get up so far with tolerable comfort some weeks ago, V>y careful selection of my path and an elaborate system of zig zage, but on the present occasion my compauion ■with the enthusiasm of youth and new chumines*, grot off the easy track that •would have led to the top and got on to about the most unpleawant and dangerous one to be found leading more certainly to the bottom and a broken neck thtin to the top. He bping a seafaring man accustomed to shinning up mainmasts and the hawling of reefs in his bowline and all the rest^of it. thought nothing of this, jnay be,' and I being a too rashly confiding weakly trusting creahue of forty seven actually felt bound to follow where another man led, I could, only faintly bless my optical organs and puff more and more frantically as ray boots slipped from under me in the moiat greasy clay an<£ I looked giddily down a precipice of 800 or 900 feet deep on my left down which astanc that I set rolling in my struggles bounded »nd tumbled as it hinting how fcjmy body would go it I lost my hold for a unement. On the right was a similar rolJ for me if I preferred that and down beInnd me (the path was a series of steps cut la a spur net much wider than the b*ok

of a knife that made me giddy and leasick only to look down, not to epeak of turning to slide or scramble down. The descent was not to be thought of now, and there v/rb absolutely nothing for it but to go on, though in front a rock projected over the path and the hill above it rose for a hundred feet at about the angle of the side of a Bteeple. I have always had it instilled into me that the spirit inoveth us in sundry places to acknowlede and confess our manifold sins and wickedness. I know that in thia place it moved one to acknowledge and confess that 1 was an ass to have ever placed myself in such a position and my inward monitor kindly placed before me with unflagging zeal, all the singularly unpleasant sensations of going down in the world for a thousand feet head over heels with oues'a brains flying in one direction and one's digestive apparatus flying in the other. But here, was the <l Parson's nose," as with grim facetionsness we termed it, ju»t before us, and I had no sooner muttered qiie (liable fattl il fat re dams ccttc gain r ? than my companion gaily steps up to the monster, briskly swings himself up the side of it like a fly up a factory chimney, and cheerfully calls upon me, a man of an adipose nature, past the middle of life, and weaker perhaps as to the knees than he once was, to do ditto. It was a most decidedly nightmarish state of things, piovocative of thoughtful inward swearing, mingled with a tendency to pray in explosions, and termination of blood to the head, I am unable to say exactly what happened next, there was an interval of some fifteen minutes of horrible scrambling on hands and knees, holding on by tufts of fern or the bare earth with nails and teeth and toes of boots, and then J stood m a cold sweat on the summit, a broad level ten ace that looked down in wooded gullies that appeared beautiful Hiough from this point may be, but were enough to turn a noble heio's flowing black locks as white as &no\v when hanging over them only by his nails. On one side the path turned into the grand forest th.it clothed the horrois of the next step in our ladder. Of course, being only mortal, I flattered myself now I was out of my misery and determined to go on to the end. We went on accordingly for a few yards in the forest, grand, beautiful, and luxuriant enough, it must be allowed, with an infinite variety of trees, ferns, shrubs, and ciecpcrs to gratify any number of botanical maniacs, who might ever find themselves placed on the spot, but there did not appear by any means such a distinct and broad track through this almost impenetrable bush as we had been assured that we should find by sundry kind iriends, who took very good care not to accompany us though. It seemed to me and even to my somewhat over-con-fident; friend, about the easiest thing in the world to lose ourselves before we had got over the next hill if Aye did not increase the distinctions of the track in some way. As a brilliant idea I suggested going back and giving the thing up altogether, but my companion proposed utilising all the old newspapers, letters, scribbling paper, or note books, we might have about us by tearing them up and scattering them in little pieces along our trail, so that we should at all events ha\e no difficulty in getting back whereeverwe might get to. Great thought! and we found sufficient support in it to devote some ot our supeifluoub oneigies to the consumption of a sandwich or two and a homoeopathic sip from a flask that contained all we should gvt to quench our thirst or suppoit our courage upon for the rest of the day. Then wo drew pipes and admit ed the kakas fluttering and bcreaming about and listened to the soft mellcw warbling of the tuis, till it was tune to jog along u gum, u hen on we went scatter ing the paper trail along" the way. Here and theio we pie--ently came on a tree marked with an axp or a twig or two cut that just w ith excessive caution and constant watching kept us to the track of some previous passer, but as for u broad surveyors line or a path they wcip "nmnly little trials of one* blind faith such, as we de meet with in this world. We kept constantly losing auy track there might be though by keep ing in the direction of the rise we picked it up again piesently, and we marked our own paper track caiefully. Piesently the newspaper was finished, and we were htill going up and up, sciambling over trunks of trees, swinging ourselves up by roots or creepers, dabbling in mud on kuees or I feet whichever seemed mobt convenient, with the dew pouring down likeiain from the ticob till we were wet to the skin, but there was no want of foot hold or something to gra^p and hang on by and I was th mUful. Then the sandwiches weie unpacked and their wrapper devoted to the pieservation of the trail, and presently we could &en through the tiees on one side a wide view over the plains. We cheered and thought we weie at the top but we found the path still branching off into a coalcellar or hewer suggesting a gully dark and cold and labyrinthian as the catacombs of Rome, and over the trees on the othei side rose another peak as high above ub as the point we stood on was from the ground. Another case of nightmare, for the further we went the more distant the end seemed, and the harder we strove the less we seemed to bo able to effect. Never mind, wo both obstinately decided that we would go on to the end even if we had to camp out, aud we tore up letters and note books to keep the lino and girded up our loins for a last desperate grapple with the difficulty, though as it was twelve o'clock we both agreed that we must turn back at two, or make up our minds for a night of it. (Tv he continued.)