The Traveller.

Southern Cross, Volume 7, Issue 35, 25 November 1899, Page 3

The Traveller.

OVERLAND TO NELSON.

{Written for the Soutkerx Cross by “ ’Arry Stotle.”) No. VI. In Greymouth just at that par-* ticular time it was considered the thing to go and see the Mapourika, then high and dry on the shore. We had not time to go and inspect it, but remembering how Mark Iwain once climbed the Matterhorn by deputy, we followed his precedent, and got our Harris to report on the Mapourika. The harbours on the West Coast are not good. A few notes on the AVest Coast generally before leaving it. It is a great place for pubs and lowdown shanties, rain, and general squalor. At the same time the AATest Coaster is never drunk, although he can drink the ocean. The female type dresses expensively, but rather dowdily from a masculine point of view. The population, as a whole, is very hospitable and sociable, as you would expect in a community largely Hibernian in origin. Coal, timber, and gold are the staple products. There is no crop. There are many goats, poultry, and swine. The fare at the hotels is, on the whole, good——always 2s. You can get porridge here and there, and you can always get pagan milk. There is the stir and bustle accompanying commercial prosperity. The road to Reefton is good. You go up the Grrey and strike off into the Mangahoa valley, which you follow down. Reefton is a large straggling place spread out in a sunny hollow—the town lit by electricity, by the way. It is so spread out that we had to ask whea we had got to it whether we had arrived. The day was remarkably hot. Going along the road we heard a continual sound like a million crickets singing together. My theory as to its origin was that it was the result of resonance. Vast numbers of crickets were singing, and the chorus was taken up by the telegraph wires along the road on the principle of resonance. Once these were set going the thoughtless insect would be bursting himself to keep up the output of sound, and the whole line was played upon like a musical instrument. This continual drain upon his energies no doubt shortens his days, so that the improvident cricket of these parts does not apply in winter to the ant for charitable aid. On this road we met a man and a brother —a cyolist from Wellington going the other way, with whom we fraternised and exchanged information re route, etc. This day we had to cross the Buller River in a boat, paying the Teutonic Charons, to ferry us over. The scenery is lovely as you ascend the Buller Gorge. It is not so awe-inspiring as Otira, but more soothing to the tired eye. The Buller is a swift, blue stream flowing down a tremendously deep gully, bavins narrow sides clothed with bush 'and terns of the deepest green. In places, where the gorge winds about, you feel shut in as in a vast amphitheatre, a little bit of sky visible overhead. The road is utterly lonely. In one place only we saw a human being, an ancient forty-niner, with the regulation long hoary beard, eating his evening meal outside in solitude. He saw us not. ““At 7 p.m. we suddenly struck Lyell, a remarkable little village stuck on the side of the gorge in the midst of mountain solitudes, 30

miles from Reefton. It was evidently at one time a flourishing place with a future. Now it is the site of the Alpine Extended. One wonders how anybody ever found his way here. It is the most lonely and impossible place for a town on this earth. We found very good accommodation, however, and quaffed a quart (of milk) apiece. The whole population, turned out to examine us. We told them that we came from Invercargill, which town they knew only as the residence of J. G. Ward, and which, according to local rumour, is a place down in Canterbury somewhere. Lyell is nearly 100 miles from Nelson, and 30 miles from Reefton, or 80 miles from Gieymouth. Next day we started at 7.30, hoping to make Hamilton’s at the foot of Hope’s Saddle and half - way to Nelson. But it came on fearfully 'wet. We camped under trees and banks fifty times to shirk the rain, but we got wet all the same. Our one compensation was a weka hunt. We saw three of him on the road, and for half-an-hour we tried to circumvent that wily fowl. We armed ourselves with stones, and got within three yard of him without in the least disconcerting him, for as soon as we fired a volley he would dodge and disappear down the gorge like the devil with the Salvation Army after him

One unavoidable concomitant of much cycling is a raging thirst, which assails you even on wet and cold days. At the outset we had drunk freely of the water to be found everywhere tumbling down the mountain sides. But we found this course so weakening that we made a compact never to drink water on the road again. This day I got a bit ahead, and happened to see a small pannikin lying by a cataract. The temptation was too strong. I got off and drank. tip comes my partner and spies my find. With calm hypocrisy, I tried to show him the folly of drinking the water, as it would aggravate his thirst. But nature would not be denied. ‘Oh well,’ said I, ‘ since you have no scruples, I’ll chance it, too,’ and I drank again. But we suffered for it. Various wiseacres offered us advice on the great thirst question. The best idea, according to some, is to carry some oatmeal or whisky with you to take the devil out of cold water. The best thirst - quencher, however, is tea, but if you can’t wait for that and must drink liquor, call for the sparkling mixture known to colonials as ‘ shandy-gaff,’ and call for it long. (To be continued.)