PAEROA, WAITEKAURI, AND WAIHL [BY OUR TRAVELLING REPORTER.]

Waikato Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1417, 2 August 1881, Page 3

P AERO A, WAITEKAURI, AND WAIHL [BY OUR TRAVELLING REPORTER.]

The season for pastoralising alas! is over ; no more sporting with Amaryllis in the shade ; no more couching on the lawns or beds of asphodel, or amidst the daffodilß, while Luna fondles round Endymion with kissing whispers; no more daisies pied and violets hlue ; no more slumbrous afternoons in the sweetly scented hay, or golden evenings on a bank of luscious clovor, for old Dame Natuie is cleaning up and setting 1 her house in order for next Reason, emptying buckets of WRter in one direction and giving her children a good blowing- up in another, bousing all the holes and corners out and making everyone uncomfortable, scolding like a vixen one moment, and biting off peoples' noses with her nasty sharp temper tVie next, 'ihe dear old soul means it all for the best bless her, and it is only her way like a respectable married female, of making her family comfortable by beiug as disagreeable as she possibly can. Let her have her own way as any discreet husband or bantling would do and try and keep out of her way as much as possible, till the necessary season of little tempers is over. What can't be ciued must be endured, and old Dame Natuie is, as Mr Joe Gartrery was wont to observe of his better half, '"on the rampage" just now, but always have a tender feeling for the old lady especially m her softer momenta that always follow the rampage, and I do assuic any one who doesn't know if that whatever her ago may be fh'3ie is no meiely ham.tn enohantie^s ran be no f.iscinating .is she c.\n when .she chooses to diess heiself up and flirt in the style of a sweot little innocent. She knows how to paint up her wrinkled, fio-a-bitten old face of to-day, anil that sharp, scieechmg vou-e can be toned down to a most melodious sweet little affectionate coo when she is pleased with her company See hei playing ahoat so saucily and yet with such mock tlemmcncss among the cherries and apples of Farmer Giles' orchaid, as he sits in his honeysuckle an hour, and luxuriates in the scent of the loses .and hllies she has brought him, and tell her age or avoid falling in love with her if you can, or watch her decked in green and gold, or white and blue, with her hair enciicled j with purple grapes, and her bosom framed in flowers, smiling across the lawns and terraces of a palace garden at the distant 1-vke and waterfall, with the most beautiful l.idms in the land vainly and humbly wishing to copy her and rival her, withpunoes who have travelled the world to find her and worship her, poets who love to sing her charms and painters who spend their lives in trying to lepresent one little feature of her perfect f.ice, and say whether she is not Ut plus bulk dc, belles, and a most loveable old fairy. She knows lam watching her and she often looks at me out of her old winter coal scuttle bonnet when she is "on the lampage," and just a soft glance of her blue eyes, just one toss of the halfhuldcn golden hair, just a half-smile on her sweet rosy lips, false as I know it to be, and all her scoldings and bad tempers are foigotten, and I am hers devotedly, &c. In this way she smiled most aitfully at me the other day in the very midst of her short tempered walkings lound the house, and, of coiuse, I sank into abject spooiipydom at once, happy to be deceived so that I might bieathe her sweet breath for one passing moment. The fascinating old lady has been unusually active with her slop-pails about heie lately, and a travcllei on horseback has to w.ule tlnongh bogs ot mud up to the saddle gnths m places; and if you take away the noble range of hills, with itsvaiied beau tic, theie would be very little to admuc just round Te Aroha, unless it weie found in the turns and bends and steep-rugged banks of the dark blue river. It was necessary, however, to endure so much for so much return, and I buckled on my old tramp suit accordingly, and being on a better steed than my Old Misciy of a foimer rule, I managed to jog along through the deep mud at a foot p ice, with an occasional canter w here a stray piece of linn lovel ground offered a chance. Thcie arc some fine slopes and sti etches of high fl.vt land extending from the lulls to the river within a mile or two of Tv Aioha, towards the Thames, that if sown with giuss, would keep any number of cattle and prosunt a raie pictiue of pastoi.il beauty ; but unfortunately, like too many othcis of the b' j st bits of the whole countiy, it all belongs to the natives, who will neither use it themselves nor allow anyone else to do so. Xow. it is all covered with fern fiom foui to si\ feet in height, that the slight frosts of a New Zealand winter have turned to a nch blown hue, appioaching to cunison in places, piutiucsijue enough doubtless to make the fortune of any kmght of the pencil who could transfei sonic of those tints to his canvass, but saddening to see going to waste. 80011 the ro.ul begins to rise, after crossing two or three rushing creeks that come foaming down from the hills, and some swamps, the deep ditches cut through which aie chaining them rapidly to tlio bos.t of farm land. These swamps, by the by, though only two years ago perfectly impassable, even by the natives who made their tiacks deviate from the line for miles, in order to round them, are easily drained after all, and a single broad cutting of a few feet 111 depth will carry all the water tli.it once coveicd them into the uvcr in ,1 few months, and leave a rich, firm hotbed of the vury finest soil 111 the world, over which a coach can be duven, in the place of the rank dangerous mpenetrable hog. Winding gently round the sides of the hills, and crossing a beautiful flat that extends for many miles beyond the AVaitoa and the Piako, and going very slow ly and carefully, we follow the track up into the range, and through some heavy bush. An early morning's mle Jjeie in the summer is delicious, with the tuis piping their mellow notes, the parrots calling and screeching to one another, and the pigeono guntly cooing from the tops of the trees, but \t\iy 'tis 'tis true that tho best of the native bush denizens gradually disappear wherever the white man layy his profaning hand. The bellbiid tijat used to make the woods ring with its chimes and ifcs occasional rich bursts of song is beard no inoie in his old favorite haunts, the mocking bird that possesses as liquid and varied a note as that of the nightingale is no more heard in pakeha groves, and the Maoris t-ay it is disappearing. One old settler whom I met in Canterbury had introduced the thrush and the blackbird, tho chaffinch and gold#noh in his shrubberies and orchards, and it afforded him a genuine pleasuie to sit and hear them fluting to him, and he grudged them nofchjng they could take fnm hifj crops, as theij? wgllrearned reward for the soothing pleasure of tfyeip morning and evening songH. fte was a hard man too, no foolish sentimentalist, and could bite as hard, and drive as hard 3, hargain as any dull -headed clod who who despises singing birds and grudges tberathejr lsep, It is not the general spirit of the lifew Zealand landowner, unfortunately, and it will be many ygars before the forests of this country $ril|. b,e awakened by tlje music of gucu of the old country frirtfs as may replace those that have fled from tfte dfea^ed. unappreciative white savage who enjoys setting in a dirty grog shop over the effluvia of bad tobacco pipes, listening to a cracked fiddle playing two or three notes of the '<

sailor's hornpipe over and over again in preference to the woods and the music of the birds. When will fedme devotes of horticulture hunt up the beauties' of the New Zealand bush and introduce into the gardens of the settlers all the wealth of graceful [shape and delicate colour they afford, that will more than hold their own aginst the flowers and shrubs of any other parfc of the world. I am thankful that I am no professed botanist, and only enjoy a shrub for its beauty, without the additional pleasure of knowing whether it belongs to the family of Ikownu or Toinkinaii, but I can see that the karaka is a shrub that far surpasses the laurel as an ornament to a garden, that the shrub called the Maori cherry, with its long, datk, hanging, pointed leaf, and its bright yellow fruit, would make a sensation in Kew Gardens, that the koromiko would make a hedge like a solid green wall of bright little leaves, decorated in season with buuche3 of black and white flowers, and I can see that another shrub with a broad spreading top, and a leaf as big as that of a cabbage, light green on the outside and white underneath, would be a curiosity as well as a wonderful ornament on a lawn, besides a dozen others, graceful and bending, with long hanging leaves, red, brown and purple, or close and cone-shaped with leaves of polished emei.ild, and without noticing the endless varieties of tree and bush ferns and stately feathered grasses, and palms of every imaginable grace and beauty, or the flowers, that for nine-tenths of the white-faced savages who look upon them, unfortunately possess less charms than a "spud." When shall we have the medicinal value of New Zealand plants properly appreciated by " the faculty"' as they are by the old bushmen ami Maoris. Numbers possess properties in their roots, buds and loaves, which, if known, would be of inestimable value to a new settler in outlying districts, <u> tley are when only known m the phaimacopCDia of some poor old Maori wfthuu. There aie tonic-, febrifuges blood purifiers, astringents, purgatne;-, cuiea for rhumatis>m, bronchitis, and also many other ills that flesh is heir to, that lie at every bush settler's door, and will be known .vnd made use of in time, when the ignorant white savage deigns to learn of the Maoii, how to use them. Soon we reached the opposite blopo of the wooded range tending down towards the plaius beyond. Along the whole bubh arc mmy gentle t-lopes and fl.ils that might be valuable, and beautiful farm land if cleared, but the bottom of a broad gully and the slopes of the lange on the light hand have boon turned into a biniling little farm by a hard working settler who has burnt off the timber and without waiting to thoroughly clear and plough the land, has sown down his grass seed on the ashes and nmonj,' the burnt stumps. And here I may offer the opinion th it it ih not good policy to ielentles.sly clear all bush land ; leave some of the trees everywheie; they afford hhelter in winter and shade in summer, in which grass always flouushes in the dryest season, and from which cattle always come out fat and comfortable. Let the bush be thinned aud cleared of the uinU.-rgiowth, but not exterminated, tar .1 gia/mg country this is the cheapi st and far the best way to tackle <i bush farm. A new - corner j generally tuch to do too much and wants to spend too muuh on clearing bußh land that would pay far better if not totally cleared. Of the rosids I can only say that any tuily pious man having got safely thiough each mile or hii way, would feel called upon to ofiei up thanksgiving aud execute pious bieak-downs if he hadnfc already done more than his lawful share of unexpected break-downs. Battle and murder, and sudden death aie far less teirifying and painful tiials to be prayed against than, these roads. However people tire supposed to know their own business best and to have their own rep-rebenlptivr-s in the councils of the local magistrates, and to be able to ask for what they want for themselves ; so I can only imagine that the good folks of these paitb lpvo their mud and glory in it or theyjwould not put un with it. In making a road bore they carefully sink to the to lowest level bo that the road acts as a dram for the surrounding land, and then they pitch in so much soft ourth without a bottom or any metal or I gravel, or thpy raise a bank of sand or clay, that after a weeks rain becomes a bog of exactly the depth of the bank. A good road m f id properly at fiiht with a good bottom of fascines and plenty of metal thrown in, would be tho cheapest in the end, for these hopeless bogs called roads must be always requiring fyesh cost and fresh labour, and aie never of even bo much üb.o as a Maori bu.sh track.