A VIEW OF THE CANTERBURY PLAINS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2007, 11 August 1892, Page 41

A VIEW OF THE CANTERBURY PLAINS.

By Edith Sbarlb Grossman.

Of all the hundreds of people — pleasure seekers, tourists, and business men — who yearly cross • the Canterbury Plains, how many, I wonder, have attached any idea ot possible beauty or interest to the scene ? The ordinary travellers have no sooner taken their, seats than they become absorbed in light literature, raising their eyes only at stations were refreshments are obtainable Opinions on this long stretch of country appear unanimous. Discounting hyperbolical expressions of dislike, indifference, or weariness, we get a pretty thorough agreement that they are dreary, monotonous, and barren of all interest.

Yet there is a certain poetry about those wide stretching levels, a sentiment of vastnes?, of the undisturbed repose of nature — something that one does not get in the beautiful surprises of hill and valley. They are so vast they dwarf the solid line of dark blue mountains, which seem sec there not as a limit, not as a conquest of height above space, but a3 a mere slight interruption. Mile after mile of tussock-covered land, treeless, unbroken ; one uniform expanse of the harsh and yellow grae*? — except tor the farms and homesteads shaded by green trees, the wooden townships, and the swift streams with their wide and desolate beds of loose grey shiDgle.

Let us suppose ourselves away from the train and its sleepy passengers, away from the commonplace of railway lines and

stations, away, alone, walking or riding, over this lonely, stil l , and monotonous laud. Is there not a great pleasuie in this solitude and monotony ? Hero the fckw ar,d tha earth hold a peaceful communion without the ectacies of mountainous aspirings, but unencro3cbi»g. Is it too much a freak of fancy to suppose a loving companionship between wide-spread space of air and the gui- 1 earth that lies beneath in its blue embrace? Here every day the red sun rises from the level of the horizon ; from the farm windows you may watch it in the winter mornings reddening the whitened grass and frozen clods of furrowed land. There in summer it sinks below the rim large and fiery, and the pool* and th<i marshes and the swamps are tinged with it, and glow like splendid jewels among the flax and bulrushes. Then for one who has dwelt here there ars memories of other hours — blue noons when the breeze is blowirg over the wild grass, long, sunny aftcrnoonp, twilights, and after-glows, when every tint of the sky was visible all around and without intenuption, when there was no sound or motion but the flutl ering of silver moths and insects' wings or the disfant murmuring of the river ; when you watched the stars come out one by one, and knew that none were hidden from* jour gaz«. For here the sky is all before us, and neither wail nor tree nor hill shuts off one part from view ; here the east and the west, the north and the south are all our own, and from morning till night, we hold the empiry of the sky. And nights— when the tussocks were blanched in the moonlight, and you watched from a di-tance the fiery eye of the. train, and saw its mass of white steam-cloud rising against the dark. There are wild flowers here, for those who would seek them — insignificant, making no display, but perfect in minute loveliness to the eye that can gize upon a eingle floweret and catch the different tints of lilac or blue or rose on its pale petal*. The toi grass wave 1 ; its hieh white plumes by the stream, and tho rapu marshals its brown clubs and grron fir j g-i over the swamp. Towards tho borders the monotony begins to break into variety. In the north are the Downs, whose sott broad sweeps and gentle slopes e>tp tinged beneath nor'-weet weather purple and rote pearl. Theie are glimpses of snow-capped nil's with plantations of fir and pine showing dark against them. At la«r the Port Hills, the gates of the eastern coast, stint off the plains. Beycnd lies the sea, which has no knowledge of them. — The lnrgest number of your friends is always raa'le up of thoee whom you have never tested.