The Traveller.

Southern Cross, Volume 7, Issue 34, 18 November 1899, Page 3

The Traveller.

OVERLAND TO NELSON.

(Written for the Soutvbbst Cross by “ ’Arry Stofcle.”)

No. V,

Things are dear all along the rente to Nelson —two shillings all round for everything. At Hokitika the barber charged me a shilling to cat tny hair. He kept the hair. Hokitika is lit with gas. It is about as big as Gore. Greymouth, Reefton, and Westport are towns of about the same size. The road Holcitika to Greymouth (24 miles) is very bad—last 11 miles you have to travel along the railway. After viewing the races, we set out for Greymouth, arriving late at night. Wb found great difficulty in getting a place to rest our heads. Eventually we put up at the Club Hotel. In bed we fell to thinking about the races, and calculating what a pile we might have made if we only knew the horses. In every race the numbers on the tote panned out something like this : Boreas 300, Earns 150, Auster 120, Zephyr 30. If you put your money on Boreas and win you get about £2, Eurus will yield £4 , while Auster will net you £5, and Zephyr will return £2O. But somehow by natural adaptation the chances of winning are in inverse proportion to the dividend. And so constant is this proportion that I believe if you put your money 20 times on Zephyr you will win once, if you put it 20 times on Boreas you will win 10 times, whilst Eurus and Auster will come out on top five and four times out of 20 respectively. This leaves you just where you were —minus the toteman’s percentage. It is so in life. If your ambition is something great your chance of getting it is small, and you have to work hard for it. On the other hand you may have a sure thing at a small expenditure of effort —but it is not worth much. ' Thus, we weie enjoying a first-rate holiday; but we had to graft conscientiously at it from day to day, plugging over mountain and stream, getting wet often, and sweating always. We might have gone a trip by train and steamer in comfort, but we should only have had a fair to medium amount of enjoyment. The expenditure of energy, etc., always somehow balances pretty well with the gain in enjoyment, etc., if not this time—at least the next time. You never seem to get a bitahead so as to have the balance in your favour. You can’t over-reach the settled Order of Things any more than you can invent perpetual motion or discover the philosopher’s stone. Look at poor old Tithonus who thought he had the best of the deal when the gods granted him immortality. But the relentless years did their work, and when he was a hoary, decrepid wreck of 8000 years or thereabouts he wanted them to take back their gift. The ancient constructors of the fable recognised this compensation or balance existing in life just as much as the most ordinary present-day philosopher who settles a dilemma by a toss-up of the coin and the remark ‘ It’s all one, anyhow.’

Thinking on the above question and on the sussedness of things in general made us wakeful. A sound like the persistent pouring of buttermilk into a deep jug attracted our attention in the early morning. My partner offered the opinion that it was snoring in the next room, and from the volume and persistency of the note he concluded that it must have emanated from the ‘ king of scknorrers ’ himself. I, on the contrary, opined that spring was now coming on and that ‘ the voice of the turtle was heard in the land.’ To prove it I went to the window and looked forth' into the backyard, where sure enough there was a large cage of turtle-doves "billing and cooing. As the day was fine the advocate of the snorer theory also got up, and we made an early start, so that on that day, Thursday, sth January, we made the best time —from Grey to Lyell, 80 miles, passing Reefton at 60 miles. (To be continued.)