A PHANTASY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXV, Issue 18948, 6 August 1931, Page 4

A PHANTASY.

PREHISTORIC FAIRLIE BASIN. “All the world’s a stage, and men and women merely players.” There you are again, you see. Overproduction, no one to pay the amusement tax, all the actors under-paid, and the company about broke. And the curtain Is up on Ashwick Flat in the second scene In the slump act. We are deeply interested In the play. No star performers, perhaps, but each and all worthy of better pay than we are getting. And the stage Is the Fall-lie basin; some thousands of acres of flat land and then down, and still further out those majestic mountains that form the background—lookers-on on the stage of life. One wonders for how long those onlookers have watched the play, and what changing scenes they have witnessed. May it not be that in some distant past the scene was such that we can only dimly picture to-day. For then the mountains, downs and plains were clothed in forest from the lofty peaks to where the ocean kept guard over this pearl of the southern seas. Near the summit of Fox’s Peak is a small lake, now placid and calm, reflecting the rocks that encircle it, but In that long ago this lake was the crater of an active volcano, the flames from which as the evening shadows lengthened would light up the valley and the hills beyond, and some sparkling stream amid the forest would seem a silver thread across the plain.

Little wonder that the actors of that long' ago would worship at that flery furnace and make pilgrimage to its brink to learn of their fortune as the flames rose and fell. And when for the actor the sands of time were spent, and he made his exit, the mourners carried him up the rocky patch to the lake of fire, and laid him upon the rocky ledge with the mourners cn either side. And the recorder would open the Book of Life and read of him, not as his followers knew him, but as his God had recorded his life. And far down amid the flames one seemed to hear the groans of the departed, and angry faces would appear with hands like jaws reaching up. As the recorder read on, and the life departed would be revealed in its true light—shorn of evil influences, and with inner virtues of which the mourners never dreamed revealed—the flames would die down and around the mountain music as afar off and of infinite sweetness would sound. The flames die down, and as the records are closed the form of an angel appears with out-stretched arms, and the departed actor is lowered into those out-stretched arms, and falls not as a weight, but as a feather cast upon the air. And perhaps to-day as our actors pass over, if we knew a little more as the Great Recorder knows, we would often be less harsh in our judgments. And down in the valley in that great long ago the village work goes on. The moa, the great ally of the people, is to be seen harnessed to the rude plough then In use; while other moas are harnessed to bring fuel for the fire that is ever burning before the palace of the king'. Soldiers are drilling upon an open space, and wonderful is the precision and time of the moas as they answer knee and rein. Little do the actors on the stage of life dream of that long ago in the Fairlle basin, but if they would climb to that placid lake, that jewel In the crown of the mountain, and watch its depths as the clock strikes the midnight hour they would see in the moonbeams pictures of that long ago, and as the breeze murmurs among the rocks they would hear stories of fire and flood, stories of love and' war that would repay them for their climb. Maybe, some day someone will be gifted with the power to Interpret the language of the Old Man of the Hills, as it is spoken by the soft breezes that play across his face and murmurs In the trees. C.H.W.