COACHING WAYS AND COACHING DAYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2949, 21 September 1910, Page 77

COACHING WAYS AND COACHING DAYS.

By A. Southron - .

The kaleidoscope of memory, twirled i by the hands of Idleness, brings up among many other visions some of coach jour- , neys in Otago in the days long antecedent to the construction of the Otago Central railway, when Cobb and Co. were the great forwarding medium, and their agents and drivers a power in the land, when "the coach" in its journeyings to and fro gave the ,time to a sparselysettled countryside, and its driver was as familiar to all eyes as the Leaning Rock or Mount Ida. Those were the "good old days." So retrospect paints them, although, perhaps', when they were the present days those who lived during them placed the "good old days" farther back. Says Pope: Man never is, but always to be, blest, thus placing the fruition of hopes and the fulfilment of desires in th«->- future; whereas by many people it should be placed in ■ the past. The present age is evidently one of iron, sandwiched between two of gold. Fortunately pleasures leave on our minds a more lasting impression than pains, and memory calls up more pleasing than displeasing pictures, making the days of our vouth the "good old times," whilst Hope lightens man's lot by delineating the future with the dyes of the Dawn. This must be the psycholgy of my inability to conjure up any but pleasant pictures of my coich journeys in the prehistoric days. I know I had them; but their ghosts will not materialise. I want Stead's Julia to condense the dfaphonous thought forms into something visible to the mind's eye. But of pleasant journeys I have memories enough", and to spare. , One shall I call up, even as in olden days the ghosts of the dead were conjured to the hither side of Styx, and'presented to the awestruck observer as the faint adumbration, the shadow of a shade, of the Rlngly hero, his sturdy limbs and mighty thews resolved into swirling vapour, and so are the vivid and cltar-cut impressions of that 20-year-old coach ride presented to mv imagination now. Roxburgh, in the dim light of summer dawn, air crystal clear, and inspiriting as wine: a "knocking at your chamber door, a" hurried dressing, and still more hurried cup of coffee. "Jingle, jingle! Crack, crack!" The grinding of wheels and snorting of horses! ' All aboard!" and you tumble out of the darkness of low, scrim-lined, stuffy rooms into the freshness of the pearly dawn, with the dew on the grass, and the red pennons of the vanguard of Day beginning to flutter in the eastern sky. Up you scramble into the box seat, draw the rug round vour knees, light your pipe, and jingle, jingle! off we go! Who is the whip/ On this occasion Fred Denham, a good dciver, full of anecdote and reminiscence and history; a fellow of many quips. Where is he now? Where are I hey all.' The Bobs and Joes and Harrys and Jims who tooled Cobb's fine coaches, fair or foul, rain, hail, snow, or sun; through winter cold and summer's blazing heat, so that her Majesty's mails and Cobb and Co.'s passengers always got through in time; barring such rare occasions as unforeseen accidents, or damage to the roads made them late, or any serious floods prevented their running., Out of the township and along the main road, with orchards even then on either hand. To the right rise the uneven faces and ragged skyline of the Knobbvs, to the left the huge bulk of Mount*Benger. Fred knows every stone on the road, every gully, every spur. If • there is no story connected with them, like a good driver he can invent one. Every "willow has grown from that twig from Napoleon's grave at St. Helena. Whether that slip is apocryphal or not, the etory still stands telling. Mile after mile we jingle on, the silver bells of the leaders playing a merry tune, whilst overhead flames all the brilliant splendour of such sunrises as are seen in New Zealand only in the dry mountain regions of the Sou'th Island. But the risen sun soon Scatters the rear of darkness thin,

lights up the whole visible earth with its clear rays, until every detail of the landscape stands before the eye as clear-cut as a cameo, and a rock 20 miles away looks but a gunshot off. The fr-v morning clouds that hung, minatory, over the long, low valley melt away into nothingness, as does the white mist that wells out from between the river banks, forming a gleaming wall, only to fade away, silently and imperceptibly, into annihilation. "Then the sun takes full charge.

Still we jingle merrily on, picking up a mail here, dropping one in return. At last we rise, winding devious, up the low hills that form a bulwark between the Teviot and Manuherikia Valleys, until we come to Shingle Creek, where we test the whisky. Then down into and along .Bald Hill Flat until, hungry as hunters, we halt at Butcher's Gully, and fall vigorously upon the stock dish of liver ana bacon. I never could make out why this dish appeared so consistently on the breakfast menu at Butcher's Guily. iJn this occasion Fred informed me that owing to the effect <>£ a curious plant solemnly pointed out by the roadside, all the sheep thereabouts grew two livers, which accounted for the menu. Off again ! Jingle, jingle, round curves, into gullies, past bare spurs, bearing a Brolific crop of stumpy rocks until the Molyneux bursts into view, and our equipage, now grey with dust, pulls up at the old Benditro in Alexandra, and 1 make my first acquaintance with the future Dredgeopolis nad with mine host, Larry Ryan, as white a mar: as ever wore boots. God rest his soul ! \ short halt, and on again, over the rfjand and shingle of the Dunstan Flat,

with the Leaning Rock standing sentinel on the forward sky-line, and the deep cleft of the Cromwell Gorge opening ahead. Across Muttontown Gully, once a busy haunt of men, now silent and barren and lone, haunted by the chirping dottredd. and the memories of a- veritable barren and lone, haunted' by the chirpGolden Age, and so-to Clyde, sleeping in the. sun by the Molyneux. Then on again through the gorge, listening to Fred Denham's account of the famous gold robbery, and hTs histories of the days of yore, while on either hand rise the sheer hills, breaking ever and anon into a nightmare phantasy of peaks and crags, such as only a Dore could conceive or execute. On through the swirling dust, the glaring light, the burning heat, until, climbing ud the sandy hill by the Cromwell brewery, we sweep round a sudden corner, past Barker's garden, into full view of the huge mass of Mount Pisa, with a few white patches glinting j in the light, and the verdure of little , Cromwell keeping watch and ward over the joining Kawarau and. Clutha, the j former sweeping sullenly with turbid J stream from the tail races of Bannockburn, the latter foaming white over its rapids, to gleam turquoise by the bridge; Cromwell, with its verdure, forming an oasis in the surrounding brown. Here we pull up for lunch at the old Commercial, where in those days the genial C. G. Mountney bore sway, and which formed at coach hour the nucleus of the town, where gathered all its choice spirits and leading citizens, to get the gossip from "coachy" and to size up the travellers. Lunch in a hot dining room to the monotonous accompaniment of an orchestra of flies; then, with fresh horses, another vehicle, and a new driver, on again, through more heat, more dust, more gorges, where shrubs grow luxuriantly among tumbled blocks i of schist amid the tinkling of hidden waters, past the 'foaming Bearing Meg and the Natural Bridge, past the* sliding Gentle Annie, and over the peninsula, where all good coachmen asked their passengers to walk,' as there was such a fine view, which I never saw, and so to the Victoria Bridge, and an all too brief rest in its hospitable shade. Then on again, past the frowning bluff where the Kawaj rau forms a streak of foam 100 ft below, j across the Gibbston Flat, over another j bridge, up a long slope, across the dan- , gerous Swift Creek, through a hole in the wall, and so into wonderful lakeland, with the Remarkables, gaunt and splintered, on the left, the. Cecil Peaks cutting j into the glory of sunset before, and an amphitheatre of mighty hills around. We ! still go on, through little Arrowtown, : nestling in its gully, past Hayes Lake, | mystic, wonderful, glowing with the reI fleeted glory of the west, sweeping round its beauteous- shores, and so to Wakatipu, Queenstown, and a night of brilliant I stars, cool waters, and the gentle susur- | ration of tiny wavelets whispering, their ; night thoughts on the shore; while, free i from dust and travel stain, the weary I but contented wanderer sinks into a sleep ■ as deep and as dreamless as' that of a baby, full fed, nestling amongst the i snowy pillows of its cot. Such a journey stands out against the j dull background of half-forgotten days I as one to be marked with a white stone. ! It still lives. Its sensations have been ■ woven into the web of being. But there are others whose images still cling to me. rising up more or less clearly in j reminiscent moods; or when, idly baski ing in such pallid sun as the north be- ! stows, I cast loose the reins of will, i allowing the steeds of Fancy to run free, ! sinking into the hazy, hall-asleep, .half- ' awake state for which we have nc word, i but which the Arabs call kef. I Well can I call up the settings of these j journeys of long ago, the marshalled maj jesty of successive ranges, long and lean i and* bare, flecked by an infinite variety of light and shade, now hard as adamant i in the full glare of the midday sun, now ' softening as the shadows deepen in their | gorges, lind the purples of evening come, not falling from the sky as the poet says, but welling forth mysteriously from the recesses of the mountain gorges and glens ; these gaunt mountains, ribbed with long spurs, crested by weird, fantastic rocks, amongst which winds that narrow thread of dust called a road, along whose sides stretch lengthy- ruled lines where the energetic miner has cut his waterraces. This panorama persists. But where are they gone?—the horses whose bells jingled as they trotted along, now? Has the iron horse, whic hhas run : and the sound of trotting hoofs forming ; a harmony to the tinkling of the bells, the drivers, those skilful kindly men, with a quip or a smile or a joke for everyone, with the most marvellous memories for the delivery of parcels, the dropping of papers, and ihe performance of commissions, who knew every face along the road, and were known; who, alas! had their failings, and in some cases went under, victims of the misapplied generosity of fares and friends? Where are they ; now? Has the iron horse which has run i their coaches off the roads, also run them I into the limbo of things that have been, J or do they still walk the earth, still I handle the ribbons and erack the whip, as in the days of old? One of the old band I met last year, Adam MacDonald, driving "a coach from Pipiriki to Raetihi; a sound pupil of Cobb and Co., subseauently Craig. And Hughie himself, he whose whiskers were a landmark in Lawrence, and whose word "went" all along the road. He, too, has joined the, great majority. We begin to feel lonely in this crowded world, but, "Dum vivimus, vivamus," or "Whilst we live, let us live.'' Birth and life and death are appointed to us all. Men come, men go; but the eternal ranges i stand four square to heaven, and about i their mighty feet the tiny race of men will play out theii allotted part. Roads ■will still wind along their spurs. Coaches still r"a along those roads whera th*

advent of &team has leftt- T ?»n undisturbed, and coaching days and coaching ways still are with as. But to us oldsters their glory has departed. Better the liver and bacon of Butcher's Gully, with youth, than a four-course lunch with age. But these few jentences of mine will, I feel, call up in many minds pictures of the coach journeys of old, and of the excellent race of drivers from Cabbage Tree Ned to Jimmy Sutherland, whose successors I know not. Progress is good, and railways are essential to progress; but, to my mind, the coach journeys of the olden days were generally much Tnore pleasant than the train journeys of to-day. To those who had money and time, they were agreeable enough. They have had to go; but that is no reason why we should not heave at least one sigh of regret over their departure.