A BUSH VALLEY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21562, 5 August 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

A BUSH VALLEY

BY LUCY FYERS. Ranfelriri. Ag* 13. (Original)

There is a valley at the back of our ; farm; a s wide bush-filled valley; a valley filled to overflowing, with, monarcna of the New Zealand bush; and carpetted beneath with all kinds of ferns and the softest moss. Up through this valley winds a track a wide, worn, -j deep-scored track. What has it been used for? Quite 50 years, ago men came in and felled great puxiris, to use for sleepers on .the first stage of the Main Trunk Railway, from 'Auckland to Frankton. The stump 3 are still to be seen, they have rotted hero and there, and the other trees have dropped their leaves upon them. Now dozens of small terns and mosses have covered them up from the cruel light. Wherever the heads of those great trees touched the ground. >■' when felled, they sent down roots and they sent up sprouts. Those sprouts are fine trees now. For hundreds of years, Maoris used that track to haul down their canoes to Lakfe Waiknre, which lies at the / foot of the hills. Quite a number of their stone axes have been found in this valley. This proves that* they, like modern men, did not always put their tools nwav when their work was finished! , Sometimes 1 stand on that old track and listen. I hear I)ame Nature talking, teaching her lessons in a hundred different ways. ■ ' i Often T wish that those preat could talk. What tales thev could ten" . What have they seen and heard of tnf Maori, the pakeha, and the birds. ========