A TRIP TO THE WAIRARAPA.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9258, 7 December 1891, Page 2

A TRIP TO THE WAIRARAPA.

PROM WELLINGTON TO FEATHERSTON. An interval of nearly thirteen years having elapsed since the first and last visit paid to the Wairarapa, then recently connected with the valley of the Hutt and Port Nicholson by the railway over the Rimutaka, your correspondent recently felt an irresistible longing to quit, for A whil», the smells, smoke, dust, and unhealthiness of Wellington, and take a second trip to the Wairarapa Valley. Accordingly, with the advantage of a temporary change from an almost ceaseless alternation between blustering nor'westers, with stifling duet storms, and piercingly cold, wet, southerly " bastere," to a reaiy calm and genially sunshiny day, one afternoon of last week, I took my departure from the Government station in one of four of the queer, ricketty, and not too clean, Bban-de-dan little cars which seem to do such indefatigable duty, year after year, on this Hutt Valley and Wairarapa railway. Beyond the bridge over the little Hutt river, a short distance from the station at Haywards, close to the foot of the track over the Tararuas to the Horokiwi Valley, comparatively little progress appeared to have been made daring many years past. The noble settlement standing on the banks of the Hutt, near the entrance of the far-famed Akatarahawa Valley, where fortunes are, I beliove, yet to b» made by rearing vegetables and poultry for the Wellington market, does not somehow, "year after year, seem to grow very far beyond the limits of a dozen or so extremely modest dwellings, tomprißed in a town belt not, as in the Empire City, clothed with a dense jungle of gorse, but with a remarkably luxuriant crop of docks and ti-tree. Fifty pounds per acre is still, I believe, the modest price asked, for tho privilege of a freehold in thiß gay metropolis of the Upper Hutt. Judging from the general aspect of the place, it is a privilege still, as the rolling yearg^go by, sadly undervdlued. Leaving behind tho really fine station at this Bpot, wo slowly puffed and jolted on our ascent to Kuiloke, a distance of six or seven miles, winding in and out, now in a deep cutting, with high walls of clay and pebbles on each side; now round sharp curves; now on a high embankment commanding an extensive view of the Hutt Valley below; now through light bush partly felled, partly moulderiag to decay. Here and there were signs of an abandoned clearing, . choked with ferns and weeds and filled with blackened trunks and logs, looking tho very picture of melancholy in dingy mourning over the blighted hopes of despairing settlers. Rattling through a short tunnel and crossing a clear mountain stream of that palegold colour dear to the heart of every lover of the Devonshire " Dart" or Derbyshire Derwent, we arrived at the pretty and rather promising looking settlement of Silverstream, with broad, level, green, and grassy paddocks, on which were contentedly feeding a few fairish cow*. It was a veritable oasis in the wilderness of forest ferns, and blasted bush, all round. At Kaitoke, twenty-eight miles from Wellington, the humble shanty, where five minutes was allowed for refreshments, has been replaced by a neat, but by no means capacious, shed-like building, where an excellent cup of tea and a tough sandwich majr be had for the price of sixpence. Besides this refreshment room — " Now is it Home indeed and room enough," could hardly be affirmed of it — and an adjoining postal telegraph station, with station master's house behind, not a human dwelling was visible at Kaitoke, save, indeed, a settler's cottage or two on the old coach road winding in and out through the forest below. The seven miles ride from Kaitoko follows, tho greater part of that distance, the course of a lovely mountain torrent, now rushing and foaming over boulders, now gliding rapidly and smoothly between thickly - wooded and fern-clad banks. Above us rose the precipitous' slopes of the Rimutaka, to the height of several hundred feet. At the summit there exists a row of neat but sunless and dreary dwellings erected for the use of the railway officials, each dwelling bearicg, like a convict, a number on its front. Opposite are erected a postal telegraph station and an engineshed. At the summit we met the up train from the Wairarapa Valley, which had just clambered up the steep ascent of eight miles from Cross Creek, down which our train was now to descend. After the liideouß Fell engine, specially provided with wheels to grip the centre rail, had been attached, we commenced, at not much more than a walking pace, this descent from the summit of the Rimutaka to Gross Creek at the foot, on tho Wairarapa side. The grade of this incline is in several places, I believe, one foot in fifteon. The railway is here scooped, as it were, out of the solid rock, after tho fashion of tho celebratod foot road louding down to Leukerbad is the Rhone Valley from the Getnmi Pass : here it is built upon an embankme»t with an acclivity nearly perpendicular down to the stream which runs through the rocky gorge below on its way to Lake Wairarapa; hero it tunnels through a projecting cliff, emerging and crossing an awe- inspiring chasm by a kind of viaduct protected on each side by strong barriers, acting as break-winds against such another terrific blast from the mountain summit which, eleven years ago, hurled engine and carriages headlong down the gorge ; now the line curves and winds through a succession of narrow cuttings, on the bottom of qverhanging precipices, which Beem as if ready to f ;ill upon and overwhelm the train. As, we slowly and cautiously descend, brake? hard down and tho Fell cpgine gripping the centre rai', we at length obtain a glimpse, and soon a more extended view, of Lake Wairarapa, with its long reach of dirty-brown water, bounded on its eastern shores by a broad expanse of undulating plain, intersected by gorges, treeless, waterless, a picture of desolation, having the bold, bare, rocky hills to the north-east of Cape Pallisor far in tho distant background. After passing Cross Creek, where we leave our useful but ugly friends, tho Fell engine and brake van, behind us, we emerge from the hills and bowl merrily along over the level country which lies between Lake Wairarapa and the valley of the name. The scenery is very pleasing. A short distance to our loft, the foot hills of the Tararua Mountains, which bound the entire length of the Wairarapa Valley on the west, slope downwards to the open plain in a succession of bold bluffs, separated by richly wooded gorgea from each other. On each side of the railway, as we approach Pahnereton, are extensive paddocks, watered with clear, gentle rippling streams, and clothed with magnificent grass, on whose 6iuwth bosom, guiltless of the defilement of -goree or "noxious weeds," are placidly feeding thousands of sheep and 'lambs, recently shorn hoggets, whose newly- washed coats form white spots against the vivid emerald of the meadow; big ewes, panting beneath grand fleeces, or patiently enduring the staggering pulls of greedy lambs at their maternal udders. Around the> paddocks, sheltering them from tho rude blasts of Boreas, and tho extreme heat of euiniuer in tho Wairarapa (83dog. in the shade that very day' at Mustertun) are planted Um-brella-like willows, tall I/otubardy pop'ara, and wide-brancbiag tedara. Arrived at Featherston, the first settlement on the railway up the Wairarapa, the fifty mileß from the city of Wellington occupying three houra, the change itrito whole aspect from thai of thirteen years ago was truly marvellous, impossible to describe to do full justice to the industry and culture, (which have created^ t. la

a, . l « 'J—g 1879, a rough, unkept, forlorn hamlet, composed of a railway shed, then terminus of the line; an hotel, since burned down, called the Club, and I believe another; twou>r three stores, and perhaps a dozen wooden shanties ; such was Feathorston when I first visited it. Ido not remember seeing a tree, other than the miserable remains of the forest on the slopes : not one good house : not one pretty garden. In 1891, behold half a square mile of grass, well-mown, planted with rows of flourishing trees, intersected by broad roads, whose smooth surface ia not sur}>aßaed by the entrance-drive to any Engish nobleman's park. Around this area, really handsome house, two or threo almost equal the best at Thorndon, the fashionable quarter of Wellington, each house standing amid thick shelter trees, with grassy lawns and gay Rower beds. Rows of trees likewise protect the settlement itself, in a measure, from tbe undesirable fury of the blasts sweeping down, often quite suddenly, from the Rimutaka Range and the Tararua Mountains above, with the violence almost of a tornado. There are two churches at Featherston, each of the style of simplicity and elegance combined, which is so generally characteristic of ecclesiastical architecture in these colonies. There is quite an imposing, and, doubtless, even more costly schoolhouso, albeit destitute of the Gothic-Italian, what d'ye pall it tower, which forms so attractive a charm of your own Central School. Thero are half-a-dozen stores ; and, need it be added, tho usual number of hotels, one of which, facing the capacious railway station, ia in every respect a most comfortable and cosy abode, and is kept by one of tho most courteous and attentive landlords it has been your correspondent's good fortune to fall in with. The whole appearance of Featherston is indicative alike of taste, culture, and competency, Beldom indeed witnessed in a country settlement, especially one but recently recovered from the long and severe depression which sneceeded the usual absurd "boom" consequent on the first opening of the railway. I was shown a piece of ground, in the immediate neighbourhood of the railway station, apparently under an acre, for which, in 1878, eight hundred pounds had been offered, and refused. The present prosperity of the district may be judged by the circumstance that recently, in one week, two thousand two hundred sheep were sent to Wellington by rail from Carterton, a settlement half way between Featherston and Masterton, to tho order of the Meat Export Company in that City. From Featherston, twenty to thirty trucks loaded with sheep are frequently despatched in a single day likewise to Wellington. Six years ago, two thousand sheep were sold near Masterton, at the splendid price of one shilling apiece ! This very week, at Fcatherston, twelve hundred wether hoggeta, just shorn, were sold at eleven shillings each. What a marvel it does seem that do what they can, our miraculous Ministers of all the talents are evidently not yet able to grapple, satisfactorily from their own peculiar poiut of view, with all this evidence of that sccial post, realised wealth in the shape of broad acres, with costly improvements thereon, and these immense flocks of high priced sheep ! Let ns devoutly hope, Sir? they way never be allowed the opportunity. Egmont. Featherston, Wairarapa, " November 28.