UP NORTH.-CAMBRIDGE TO CHINEMUTU.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume V, Issue 922, 26 January 1885, Page 2

UP NORTH.-CAMBRIDGE TO CHINEMUTU.

No. 4.— By. D. Scot.' v ..'.

The distance between Cambridge and the next settlement on the Ohinemutu road, Oxford, is twenty-two miles, and in this stretch of country there are not more than six houses. The soil, although not so.good as 'the Waimate Plains, is of excellent "quality: 'Of this large extent of land, ■ only - a very small part is cultivated or even used as pasturage. The reason of this is not far to seek : the ground is in the hands of a few holders who either will not make use of it themselves, or put such a value on it that small capitalists are not able to obtain a section. After leaving Auckland with' its haggard crowds struggling for a mere existence, and passing through this fertile yet uncultivated land, one cannot help thinking that some gospel according to Henry George is required to put things on a different footing. The country consists of a series of flats along the Waikato river, bounded by hills of a moderate elevation, covered with fern and manuka. When the fern,etc., has been burnt off, and seed sown, a fair crop is obtained. The favorite plant for pasture is red clover, for which this kind of soil is peculiarly suitable. Vast quantities of this are imported to be sown every year, as the seed never comes to maturity of itself in New Zealand. Several attempts have been made to introduce the humble bee, the insect which fertilises the. flower of this plant, but all have proved unsuccessful. The new town of. Oxford, which we reached at about four in the afternoon, consists of a hotel, two stores, a private house, and a butcher's shop. Who keeps the owners of these employed it would be hard to discover, as there is only one house in eight miles from the top of the hill. We called at one store, and found the owner asleep and his door locked ; the other store seemed to have no owner at all. In the butcher's .shop we could see that the stock-in-trade consisted of an ox-tail and two pieces of suet. The hotel, however, does a large trade with travellers on their way to and from the Hot Springs. Close by are the works of the Thames valley railway which is intended to join the Government line at Morrinsville. The earthwork is finished and awaits the laying of the rails. ■ But how a railway will pay in this uninhabited country is a puzzle. There is some talk of continuing this line to Ohinemutu, and %o securing the tourist traffic. The work was undertaken, and so far has been carried out by some Auckland capitalists who are said to own most of the land along the route.

The road from Oxiord to Ohinemutu is much more varied than what we* had already passed over — as in the distance of 33 miles the dividing ridge between the Thames valley and the Hot Springs district is crossed, and 13 miles of bush i country has to be gone through. Within a few miles of Oxford several beautifully clear streams are crossed — the tributaries pf the Upper Thames. The soil becomes lighter as we advance into the heart of the country, a certain amount of pumice-stone in ever increasing quantity is seen to be mixed with 'the soil. Still, wherever the red clover has been sown it grows luxuriantly. It struck us while travelling along that a very bad sample of seed must have been used by the settlers here, as the whole country wherever artificial sowing has been done is one mass of hawk weed. Many of the fields we passed in the settled districts were of one uniform yellow color. A magnificent view of the upper part of the Thames valley is obtained from the high ground here. The eye can take in at one view 30 or 40 miles of the fairest scenery in our country — hill and valley, river and plain, rolled out like a map, and hardly a human being to possess it, except the few wretched natives who dwell on the edge of the bush. The whole ot the fine road through this bush has been done by the Armed Constabulary. A few of them still remain along the road, to keep it in repair. About mid-day we reached the road-makers' camp. As the road is carried only through very high ground in this part, water is not to be found, Except at the bottom of the gullies ; and, as we had been travelling' lor several hours under a burning sun, our thirst was intense. Just before we came to the roadmakers' camp we had almost determined' to go to the bottom of one of the gullies, about five hundred feet below us, to obtain some water, but decided to try on a little further first. It was lucky we did so, as we found out afterwards that what we thought was the bottom of the gully was really not so, as the water has worn a, channel about one hundred and fifty feet below this, whose sides are as steep as the walls of a house. Water is brought to the few houses here from .the stream below by means of that kind of pvmp known as a " ram." We reached the edge of the bush at Ohinemutu in the evening, after a monotonous walk through the bush ; but the sight which met our eyes when we got to the edge of the clearing amply repaid us. There before us lay spread out the blue waters of Lake Rotorua, famous in Maori song and legend. Beautiful hills bathed in the evening sunlight rose all round ; and — what is that column of vapor rising on the farther side of the lake? and another, and another ? These must he the distant boiling springs we have come so far to see. Being tired with ' our long day's march, we pitched our tent on the edge of the clearing for the night, but not before we had ascended one ot the femcovered knolls near to have a good look round. Not a living thing to be seen — all was still, the only movement being the jets ot steam rising on the further side of the lake.