OUT OF THE BUSH.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume X, Issue 1914, 26 April 1888, Page 2

OUT OF THE BUSH.

At seven o'clock the next morning we are once more on the road and speculating as to the distance we have come, and may yet have to go. There is a haziness about distances in this part of the world, which imparts quite an air of romance to one's proceedings. What one informant calih eight miles another puts down at 13, and there is, therefore, quite a charming uncertainty as to where you may be, and when you are going to reach, any particular spot, the fact probably being that very persons really know what the distance's are. So far as we can judge, we made from 25 to 27 miles the first day from Hunterville, but the uneven rate of travelling renders guessing rather risky. Anyway, we propose to se6 it through, be the distance great or small, so, a few minutes after leaving the camp we are trotting along a sideling on an up-grade, a river, which we take to be the Hautapu, beiug below us to the right, and fche range above us to the left, as before. And now for many miles we are up and down, and in and out over a succession of awful gorges, the country being the very roughest that it is well possible to conceive. The track is all cut out of the papa rock, and there are many places where the ground falls away sheer below the path, and where a slip would carry away the track, too, and make the position awkward. Bare rock is frequently showing in all directions as we journey on, the track winding in and out along a succession of V shaped gorges, and over ridge after ridge, which will present some nice little problems to the engineers if they ever come to locate the line through here. One thing is certain, the cost of making and maintaining the line through this piece of country will be something enormous, and has probably never yet been ascertained with any approach to exactness. As a gentleman with exceptional knowledge remarked a short time ago, "We don't know the worst of it yet." There you have it in a nutshell. After several hours of this, we come to a succession of flats, with ! spurs intervening, tbe travelling being of a very slow and dismal nature. A good deal has been said at one time and another about tbe amount and quality of the timber on this line, but it is nothing to " blow about " after all. There is a lot of pine bush, it is true, but a very large proportion of it is miro, which is not usually considered of much value. What is more, the timber is nearly all small, sappy stuff, fine mature trees being seldom seen. As for the totara, there is some scattered about, but that, too, is most poor-looking stuff, and nearly all the trees are gone in the heart, if one may judge by the logs that have been crosscutted and rolled out of the way. As a sawmill bush, most persons would pronounce it a decided failure. Talking about crosscutting just now reminds me that I ought to explain that where there are level practicable stretches of ground the bush has been felled and the timber rolled out of the way for a width of from 30 to 40 feet ; as there are no lawyers or supplejacks and but little scrub, this has not been a difficult matter. The trees, however, have not been chopped level with the ground, but the stumps have been left in the ordinary way, so that it is not easy to see what particular benefit has been conferred by this work. If there had been less logging and more felling, things would have been much better. At noon we are still winding about among the hills, the track [alternating between flats and side-cuttings, and tbe laud being decidedly poor. Half-an-hour after, we begin to ascend a steep sideling up a tremendous gorge, and at 1 o'clock we come out into a bit of open hilly land. Passine nlong a down-grade and through a belt of bush, we come out into another piece of open hilly land with two timber cottages, a storehouse, and a whare of totara bark in it. Totara bark, it may be explained to the uninitiated, can be pulled from the trees in great sheets, and makes a capital roof when properly laid.- By this time it had come on to rain, and as we did not know what might be ahead of us, we determined to make sure of safe quarters lor ourselves and the horses for the night, and accordingly camped. There were horses and sheep on this open land which is hilly and bouldery, the soil in the valley being however free of stones and growing a little English grass. For root crops the land from Hunterville right up through would appear to be of very little value, potatoes succeeding but poorly. Perhaps the climate has something to do with it, for we were told at Hunterville that there had been a fall of snow the week previous to our arrival, which we learned afterwards had been general right through to Murimotu. This, for the third week in March, does not seem genial ; indeed, one Hunterville resident informed us that he had only been there a fortnight and was " quite full up of it." We reckon that we have come about 25 miles on this, our second days's journey from Hunterville, bringing us up to about 70 miles from Marton. Fifty miles in two days is not fast travelling, but we have a good way to to go yet, and a great part of the track has been very bad. We therefore treat the horses to a half-holiday, turning-in in good time in the evening and promising ourselves an early start in tbe morning.