TERRA INCOGNITA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 151, 26 June 1912, Page 13

TERRA INCOGNITA.

TO THE MAIN TRUNK TRAVELLER COUNTRY NOT SEEN FROMTHE EXPRESS AN INTERESTING QUARTER OF THE ISLAND. (By "Autos.")

Though the Main Trunk railway has been open now for more than three years, and hundreds of thousands of passengers have already travelled throngh in, that time by the daily express -eacfhi iwayV L *b *** jnevertheleee. a. fact that, to the vast majority of them, the central part of the country through which the line passes is still a vast unknown. Before the line was. open, and coaches ran between the rail-heads over the service road alongside the railway, it was possible to get a fair idea of the country during the day spent oil the coach. Those, indeed, were the palmy days of Main Trunk travel, all the journeying being done by daylight, so that all the country between Wellington and Auckland passed before the eye en route. It was possible then to see the long Waikato Valley, the upper waters of the Waipa, and the fern-dad, rolling hills of the Mokau and Wanganui watersheds, and the first stages of the entry into the forest, all from the windows of the slow ambling train ol that era. THE COACHING DAYS. Then came the day in the coach. The length of the journey diminished as the rail-heads advanced, but at the time ■when the writer went over the route the coaches ran between Waimarino and Ohakune. Nothing could havo "been pleasanter or more exhilarating than the trip. In the early morning, when a start was made, . if the weather was fine, the view of the volcanoes — Buapehu, Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro — •was simply glorious. It still 6iirvives for the "early birds" on the express South-bound, just then striking the j broad daylight after the night run from Auckland. -Then the load ran into miles and miles of bush, crossing^ on its ■way tremendous gorges and gullies, and winding along the old crater beds, into Ohakune. ' The building of the railway could be seen from the road. Hero was the Makatote Viaduct, laboriously erected in columns and girders of steeL To the passenger on the coach the rat-atat of the pneumatic xivettera was as inspiriting as the beating of the kettledrum to the soldier. From the road could be seen at one end of the gorge the massive base of Buapehu; at the other, on a clear morning, the snowcapped cone of ' Egmont. Thus the gorge might be said to mark the halfway frontier of the two commercial spheres of. the rival cities — Auckland and Wellington. Between the two mountains lay the great Main Trunk country, the promised land of the settter of to-day.

VIEW OVER THE FOREST. The service road, since the completion of the line sadly neglected through disuse, though it should be part of the main road to Auckland, skirts the lower slopes of the base of the mountain, and here and there, from bends of the road above the railway between Horopito and Ohakune, magnificent views of the great forest of the Waimarino open out. This must be one of the finest views in the world, certainly one almost without parallel. Miles and miles, to the hazy horizon westward, stretches the bush, sombre at midday, but, in early morning and again just before sunset, strikingly beautiful. The forest even now is practically unbroken. The trees thin out here and there with the greyish tinge of dead timber. Grassy paddocks of a lighter green, studded with stumps and littered with logs, denote settlement of some standing. Curls of smoke rising among the trees, and an occasional house, indicate one of the bush townships, springing up here every dozen miles or so from one another in the heart of the bush. Brown patches give evidence of later bums, widening the area of productive land. , Where the trees still stand, but are smaller and sparser, the sawmiller and the timber-worker has been cutting out the giants of the forest- for conversion into the boards and planks and scantlings that make the four walls of our houses. The iron chimney stacks of the mills themselves, smoking peacefully away, are visible too, and on a quiet day you can catch the sonorous note of the sawa slicing up the logs. HERITAGE OF THE MAIN TRUNK. What you see, or rather what you saw, for few people travel along the road now, certainly few city folk, is but a small part of the grand heritage the Main Trunk Railway opened up to the people of New Zealand. Beyond the western horizon are miles again and miles of forest to the borders of settlement in Taranaki and the coastal fringe down towards Wanganui. The country further back to the west and south is different. The forest plateau of the volcanic deposits and detritus of Ruapehu changes to the characteristic papa country— deep-gullied, high-ridged, pie cipitoufi, broken. It is clothed with a more tropical bush, luxuriant in ferns, creepers, ratas, shrubs — a thickly-matted impassable vegetation, beautiful, but of scant use for timber. Voyagers on the AVanganui River see it in its most characteristic form. Thb belt of papa extends between the volcanic soils of Ruapehu and Egmont, and the alluvium of the sea coast from beyond the Mokau in the north to beyond the Rangitikei in the south. Though it is invariably broken country, the papa belt is so fertile as to be much preferred by settlers to the easier volcanic country of the Upper Waipa, Wanganui, and the Waimarino. Papa country can be depended on to grow grass in abundance, and it will usually carry at least three sheep to the acre in its earlier stages. Nearly half the real Main Trunk country is papa, but it is now largely settled, especially to the south of the border line drawn . between Ruapehu and Egmont. One large block, however, of some 64,000 acres, away back from the line towards the Wauganui River, ab'juthalf way down oh its devious course from Taumarunui to Piprriki, still remains

absolutely virgin bush. The surveyors are now at work on it with a view to suitable subdivision into farms. It will be opened up in a year or two, and with it goes, in the way of bush, about the last big area of papa country in tho^e parts. THE NORTHERN FERN COUNTRY. Outside the region of solid bush there is to the north another class of country in the undulating ferny pumice land running right from To'Kuiti to Tau maruuui, parallel with the railway, about fifteen miles to the west, where it begins to merge In the papa and limestone of the Mokau and the papa of the Ohura valley. It is customary to decry this fern land with its clumps of bush on •the tops of ridges and its wide swampy valleys, but settlement is already showing- what can be done with tho soil by competent, observant farmers. It is found that by careful handling it will take grass permanently and pasture healthy sheep and cattle. It is not heavy land and needs careful management. But it is easy country and easily worked. There is no big timber to clear and the settler can get a return quicker. What the future of this enormous tract of fern-clad pumice country will be depends entirely on the skill, resource, and energy of the men who farm it. A good farmer will make a living where a bad one will starve. THE PUMICE PLATEAUS. Lastly come the upland plateaus extending for many miles round Ruapehu. These have a thin skin of black soil on many feet of fine pumice. In their natural state they grow nothing but native tussock — for dozens of miles there is not a stick of timber. These plains— practically deserts to look at — were long regarded as hopeless, and were let in enormous areas by the Government at almost nominal rentals. It was said that they could not carry more than about one sheep to five acres. That ratio has come down very much in recent years, and the fact that the land, if skilfully cultivated, will grow fair root crops, as, for instance, at Karioi, is some indication that its possibilities are not exhausted by the pasturing of a handful of sheep. Further south, in the Murimotu and Moawhango, this land shows a considerable improvement, and is in appearance infinitely more prepossessing. Wealth from the wilderness is not got by brawn alone ; brain also must go towards the task, if the best results are to be achieved. A COUNTRY WORTH SEEING. To go back to the beginning again — all this country is still an unknown land to most of the Main Trunk travellers. The .Northbound expiess from Wellington hits the night as it reaches the Southern frontier of the Main Trunk country at Taihape. Daylight is not seen again until somewhere near Auckland. The southward found train does give the traveller a better chance. Day dawns about Raurimu in tlie autumn, but the trouble is that after a weaiy night in the train the passenger is too tired to trouble much about the view from bis carriage. He lets it pass by him in a dream, and thus he never really sees much of one of the most interesting parts of New Zealand. Let him break his journey at some point in the heart of the country and spend a day or two looking round. He will find it time well spent.