AS OTHERS SEE US.

Hot Lakes Chronicle, Volume 4, Issue 187, 1 July 1896, Page 3

AS OTHERS SEE US.

We make further extracts from Mr jHaweis' notes to the " Queen "of his Hot Lakes experiences. In the following he describes his bath in the warm lake at Wairakei : A Starlight Swim. " I stole out; it was clear and frosty. I made ury way to a warm lake.at the bottom of the hotel grounds, a little jbed and a tallow caudle beiug the only accommodation provided. Anj*thing more weird than that starlight bath I never experienced. I stopped in the deep uight from the frosty bank into a temperature of about 80. It was a large shallow lako. I peered into the dark, but I could not see its extent by the dim starlight; no, not even the opposite banks. I swam about till I came to the margin—a mossy, soft margin. Dark branches of trees dipped in the water, and I could foal the fallen leaved floating about. 1 followed'the margin round till thu light in my wood cabin dwindled to a mere spark in the distance, then I swam vut into tho middle of the lake. "When I was upright .the warm water reached my chin; beneath my foot seemed to he fine sand and gravel. Then leaning my head

back I looked up at the Milky "Way \ and all the expanse of the starlit heavens. There was not a sound.; the great suns and planets hung like golden balls above me in the clear air. The star dust of planetary systems — whole universes—stretched away bewilderingly into the unutterable void

of boundless immensity, mapping out here and there the trackless thoroughfares of God in the midnight skies. " I'Ont la poussiere," as Lamartiue finely writes in oft plagiarised words, ■" sont les Etoiles qui reuionteut et tonibent devaut Lui." How longlremained there absorbed in this supermundane contemplation I cannot say. I seemed to be embraced simultaneously by three elements— the warm water, the darkness and the starlit air. They wove a three-fold .spell about my senses, whilst my intellect seemed detached, free. Emancipated from earthly trammels I seemed mounting up and up towards the stars. Suddenly I found myself growing

faint, luxuriously faint. My head sank back, my eyes closed, there was a humming as of some distant water-

jail in my oars I seemed falling asleep, but common sense rescued me just in time. I was alone in an unknown hot lake at night out of reach of human call. 1 roused myself with

,a <>reat effort of will

I had only just

time to make for the bank when I grew quito faint and dizzy. The keen frosty air brought ine unpleasantly to my senses. My tallow dip was guttering in its socket, and, hastily resuming my garments, in a somewhat shivering condition, I retraced the rock}' path, then groped my way over ithe little bridge under which rushed ; the hot stream that fed the lakelet, and guided by the dim starlight I rei gained my hotel. 1 had often looked up at the midflight skies before at Charles's Wain .and the Pleiades on the Atlantic, at the Southern Cross out on the Pacific, and the resplendent Milky Way in the Tropics, with Mars and bin so-called canals, at the moon from the snowy top of Mount Cenis ; but never—no, never—had I studied astronomy under -such extraordinary circumstances and with such peculiar and enchanted environments as on this night, in the Wairakei hot springs." Mr Haweis journeyed here via Nepier and Taupo and this is how he describes the rond: Wild llokses.

A throe day's rough coach drive from Napier to Kotorua hot springs (or, better still, rough private posting with three or four horses) takes you through the finest mountain gorge in the North Island. The Pocky Mountains through which I had passed in the Spring are vaster, but nothing could be lovelier than hill, valley, scrub, torrent, forest, glen and uudufating plain to be tra» versed from Napier to Tarawera; to Luke Taupo, to Wairakei, to Kotorua and the volcanic land or inferno of sulphur boiling lakes, geysers mixed up with a Paradise of foliage, gum trees, and blossoming bushes. After tho precipitous road and the incessant rattling through Alpinedike passes and swinging round rocky corners, on which, occasion our leader, a wily old horse, seemed to delight in shavinz the edge of sheer cliffs, in order to give us a good view of the roaring torrent below —to descend into

the pumice plains of tho Taupo trict, with its monotonous scrub and coarse pasture seemed a little dull, when suddenly our driver points to the distance : ' Look, yonder are the wild horses!' In fact, we have entered a vast plain, where for forty miles on either side a tract of land, useless to man, is tenanted by wild p.gs, descendants of those tamer swine let loose by Ci.pt.

Cook in 1709, and by wild hor.-es chiefly descended from those that escaped from the Government cavalry in the Maori wars. These happy beasts are occasionally joined by fortunate runaways and absconders, and quite lately a fine-bred stallion has got amongst thc-m, end it is said has much improved tho took, which was deteriorating from in-and-in breeding, (in either side of the road the scrub

bush and rough boulders gave place here and there to scanty pasturages, and at a turn in the road we cameup--011 six wild horses feeding quietly.

With the exception of a coach twice a week, or a stray poster like mine, the land is practically desert, unvext by jnan.

We rame so clo«e to the creatures that a lasso might easily have been thrown. Anyone may catch them who

can. They ara as wild and unclaimed as the tusked pigs that gouge up the soil by their side. The driver declared he recognised two of tbeni—ony a fine fellow, who tossed his head high, snorted, and with tail held high, and lashing his sides angrily, trotted leisurely away—untamed wild creature, whose neck never had, and probably never will, bow to the yoke! I was glad to have neon them no tamer than zebras or giraffes on African plains. Strange to say, they are very little hunted. Generally it is difficult to get near them. The plains are full of rocky boulders and overgrown pits, and man and all but wild horses break their legs in the pursuit. Every now and then an enterprising hunter secures one, ' but,' said the driver, ' thev »re hard to tamo —fret 'emsolves to death in harness, and there ain't much last in 'em either. You may get a dozen, and only one or two will turn out worth the breaking. Yonder one is a lino fellow, however, and we know him, but he's not been caught yet.'"