OVERLAND TO THE LAKES. [By a Tramp.]

Waikato Times, Volume XVI, Issue 1363, 26 March 1881, Page 2

OVERLAND TO THE LAKES. [By a Tramp.]

The next point to be made for was Paeroa — sixteen miles from Cambridge, and about eleven or twelve from the «pot I had reached. The road was getting, at every step, more and more lonely, and, if possible, more dusty. It is not per* missible for middle-aged, respectable gen* tlemen to run after butterflies for amuse* ment, and they can't generally sing even to their own satisfaction, and that is say* ing a great deal. I had no one even to speak to but myself, and that privilege I was fain to exercise till I was sick of it ; but it was of no use — nothing would relieve the monotony of the long hour after hour of tramping along the lonely road, Man can't exist without another man, even if it is only to look at him. Poor Mariana, in the Moated Grange— and how much she loathed the mid-day hour, and sighed that she was aweary, aweary, and wished that she were dead — would persist in bearing me company, in spite of all endeavours to get rid of tho unhappy lady. The frail blue-bell peering over, Rare broidery of the purple clover. would be quoted and spouted ad tiauseum as I breathed the balmy odours of tho modest little flower that is sweeter thanthe rose and richer than all the beauties of the garden. Chaunteth not the brooding bee, Sweeter tones than calumny ? might be asked over and over again in varying tones, and with infinite emotion as the busy little gentleman in question hummed around. The woodbine and the eglatere Drop sweeter dews than traitor's tear might be urged in every tone from deepest bass to shrillest falsetto. I might stop and admire those big black Bedouins, the dragon flies, swooping across the path, or to watch the bright blue swamp hen paddling about. I might present my walking-stick at the splendid brace of pheasants that fluttered out from the scrub every here and there, and cry " dead for a ducat !" Old Spenser with his " Fairie Queene" and his fairy fancies and sweet old verse was quite ready to keep me company for a mile ; and my old friends, Shenstone, Shelly, and Keats, volunteered a song or two from their abode of bliss. Unbelieving Strauss was quite ready to argue with me that all I saw and admired was not the result of perfect and loving design, but the mere passing moment of eternal chaos, beautiful to some of us only because we happen to be the natural production of it, but nothing more, in fact, than fire, confusion, and destruction everywhere. I might try for ten minutes to seek with Darwin for the origin of man, or wonder whether the charming old Greek myths were not as productive of good as the dark, stern, always blaming, always punishing deity of Moses ; but still it was all no useMariana would persist in looking out from every ti-tree bush and from behind every boulder, and sighing in lachrymose tones, "I am aweary, aweary : I would that I were dead !" I couldn't help wishing to heaven she were, and would willingly have invested a shilling in a razor for her ; but soon there was something else than dust to observe, and the weary one ske» daddled to find some more appreciative listener. Not but what I love Mariana, and sincerely sympathise with her, but » constantly-crying beloved one ia apt to become sometimes a bore, even to the most devoted lover. The road presently turned off, and 1 came on the commence* ment of the new road to Paeroa, and direct to Ohinemutu, that is rapidly being formed. This will be of the greatest im* portance to the progress of Cambridge and Ohinemutu, ami I shall pay more particular attention to it presently, when I have seen more of it, and talked with the working parties along it, aud when I shall be able to state the advantages it will offer to travellers over the old road ; but I may state briefly that, whereas the old road from Cambridge to Eotorua passed over 120 miles, the new one will be only 54i miles, and in a direct line ; while the road being properly surveyed will be far more level, and without any of the fantastic practical jokes, in the shape of twists and. turns, that surveyors of New Zealand roads only too often indulge in. My way lay past a beautiful series of green terraces or broad, level, grass* covered flats, descending step by step, and showing the impress of Time's foot as he has descended from the original level of some gigantic river down to the present bed of the Waikato. More deli-ciously-beautiful river scenery, and of broad, slumbering plains bounded by their wooded ranges, could not be imagined than is to be found along this road. The beauty may not be of the grandly-impres-sive and wonderful order, such as may be found about Taranaki, Taupo, Rotorua, or the Sounds ; but for sweet sylvan or river pictures, and the beauty of noble, rolling plains that extend for a hundred miles or more, and tell of peace and plenty and content for the future, give me the Waikato above any part of New Zealand. A little further and I came to a curious piece of broken country, with gigantic stony gullies, whose precipitous, broken sides, torn here and there by landslip?, looked a fit retreat for some brokenhearted old demon, such as the ancient lore of most countries tells of, and in whom the past generation of Maoris fully believed. Some great yawning caves, whose mysterious depths have never been explored, might have been the private apartments of the malevolent individual in question, and the rocky sides of the surrounding hills, worn and seamed by extreme old age, looked like the face of some ancient patriarch, wearied and tormented by the trials and sorrows of hia eight or nine hundred years' experience of this life, and protesting against the injustice of giving him more than the usual three score years and ten to which his fellow-men aro sentenced. The want of water about here was trying to me at all events, whatever it may be to future residents upon this spot. There were no sparkling, gushing little rills, freshening up the scene at every few hundred yards, such as may be found generally along New Zealand roads, and my tongue felt something like what that of the late lamented Mr Dives must have suffered when he implored the more fortunate Mr Lazarus to spare him one drop of cold water only, and with a most exemplary amount of charity on the part of the good man who had got all he wanted for Number One, was refused. A deep glaring, white cutting and a bit of roadl overhung by some enormous rocks, and bordered here and there by some mighty boulders that, by a little effort of fancy, . might be transformed into the mouldering foundations of some ancient Tower of Babel, or the temple of a long by-gone race like the Cromlechs of the Druids still to be found in England, formed the next step in my day's inarch. Then by a refinement of cruelty on the part of the old demon, who must sorely still be the presiding genius of the «pot, I was invited by a sweet babbling and rushing of falling waters to look up one of the gul* lies and behold a delicious little waterfall tumbling over the rocky sides, and down into the impenetrable depths below. I could only look and long like Tantalus, for alas the pangs of my baked tongue and duet -clogged throat were

not to be appeased, and the refreshment iras unattainable. On the road I noticed indications of what may be valuable stone-quarries tome day, And the Waikato rushing far below through its steep banks, covered with graceful, hanging ferns, every now and then opened up a delightful picture. The level terraces affoM tven now fine feed for cattle, and if Bown^with grass or cultivated as vineyards (as they will be in times to come), would be indeed a lordly heritage to the fortunate individual who might then come in for them. The whole district around is magnificent, and will form a country of illimitable wealth when its resources are more fully developed. Nothing muoh in comparison has yet been done towards that desirable end, for the task is far too mighty to be completed in one generation, . though a very good beginning has been made here and there. Passing along the banks of the lovely Waikato where as at the rapids, its deep blue stream comes foaming, rushing and winding over rocks, apd shallows or eddying into still deep bays and pools, or where again it; pours a mighty roaring flood between rocky banks or in another place seems to rest and just play with the overhanging ferns and grasses, a traveller may find an endless succession of pictures such as will never be effaced from his memory by anything Nature can afterwards show him from her gallery of wonders and beauties. I am quite sure I cannot be the first who has eaid of the Waikato, " what a splendid stream for salmon." Whether this king of fishes has been successfully and largely introduced, I could not ascertain but that salmon will flourish here, and that the patrons of the road and line have taken very good oaru to look after such a fine field for them there, can be very little doubt. I beg old Isaac Walton's pardon for not hauling in the ohoisft expression of nil conventional travellers in speaking of fishing. |"The disoiples of Isaac Walton, " but the faot is, not one fisherman in a hundred ever heard of the good old gentleman, and might just as well be termed a disciple of Mahommed or Vislian for all he could understand of this or other favorite hackneyed expressions of penny-a liner tourists. Another last expiring effort brought me to the banks of a little noisy crystal stream, the Periri I believe, sparkling over boulders and bordered with deep green delicious watercresses and shaded by fern and grass. Here was relief for my sufferings and I descended from the bridge that crosses it, tore off my dusty garments, and lay m cooling bliss, paddling, drinking, and bathing for an hour. A little further on one comes upon the residence and homestead of the large property owned by Messrs Maclean and Co., about Paeroa. The land I crossed on, a fine high level, was of splendid quality for either grain-growing or grass. The crops of wheat that the dark loam on a clay subsoil about these j parts would produce would certainly exceed those of Otago or Canterbury, and the low land would grow grass and root crops that would cause a poor English farmer, obliged to expend a fortune annually on guano or bonedust, to give up any further idea that the old country is the pick of creation, and make up lua mind to try freehold land at £2 an acre, a climate like that of Italy or the South of Franch and a fresh virgin soil before he formed any opinion upon the subject. A mile beyond lies the Waitoa Valley camp of the Constabulary, under the command of Major Minnitt, late of the 18th Royal Irish. It is a picturesquelysituated little settlement of neat white tents, in which from twenty to thirty constables appear to lead a remarkably comfortable and not over - worked life. The constable generally is not an over-courteous specimen of creation excepting to a tender hearted cook, who is known to have a cold joint in the safe, or to a real gentleman who presents his credentials in silver with the Queen'n hoad duly stamped upon them and I cannot compliment myself upon having received more than the usual amount of civility shown by him to the general public. However, I have to thank Sergeant Webb for some few particulars of the work done by conßtabulary on the new Cambridge and Rotorua road. They commenced working on it in November last, and have finished already about seven miles. The fiirat half mile was through heavy flax, swamp and titree that had to be cleared and drained, the road being raised above the level and solidly formed on a good bottom ; the next half mile was still heavier, and then they had to cut through half a mile of rock that necesitated a considerable amount of blasting. About two miles and three quarters more through very rough and nilly ground have been completed, and about three miles further, now in progress will carry the road from their camp to where it joins the portions finished or in course of completion by contractors whose work I will notice in the further course of my journey. The path winds up the hills behiud the Constables' camp, and from the top a view if obtained of an extraordinary expanse of noble agricultural country, embracing in the foreground a long stretch of low gently sloping hills and broad upland flats, and beyond that the grand valley of the Waikato, bordered by the Bof fc purple ranges in the far distance, Beemingly guarding this Eden of New Zealand from the intrusion of any rough or hurtful spit it. This district cannot be approached for beauty or solid value of the land by any of the same extent in New Zealand. The boasted plains of Canterbury are very poor by the side of it, and there is wealth here alone to make Auckland the queen of the colony, without its other unrivalled gifts. Of course, there are spots here and there when it is examined minutely, of broken or inferior land, but the bulk of it is splendidly rich and capable of returning every produce of the earth in unbounded profusion to its owners. Corn, and wine, and oil, to use the language of the ancients expressive of plenty are actually what the country will turn out in any quantity, and the flecks and herds that it would carry would feed the whole colony with enough to spare for export afterwards. The chirrupping of the grasshoppers and the hum of the bee might have been rather a dull representation of " the murmurings of a happy Pan," as I looked over the glorious scene, but the day is not far distant when the whole land will shout with gladness, a thanksgiving to the Lord for the greatness of His blessings.

"Gbtjbbins is very close," it was observed: "he will squabble aboub a single farthing."— "Well," remarked Sharp, " I have always thought the less one eijuabbles ahout the better." 1 Thb largent sheep ranch in the United Stateß ! is in Dimmitt and Webb counties, Texas. It has 300,000 acres, and pastures 300,000 sheep. ' Mb. Cbilders has introduced in the House ofc€fbmmons an army Reform Bill, 1 and that when brought into opejratjoa £250,000 would be saved on the army expenditure. Corporal punishment is to he abolished. The changes proposed will, it is stated, benefit the officers of the service. - , . The Palmeraton race meeting, as originally 'projected, has fallen through owiOg to tbefew nominations received. The local folk will probably eolace themselves fortbe -failure by getting up a one-day's meeting for distnct horaes and hacks. This is the second time this season that the scantiness of entries has damned a xtfeefciiig— Papalsura beinaf the other case in point. The teasoa i^ Moult to find,