Plant Hunting on Mount Owen.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VI, Issue 5, 1 August 1902, Page 35

Plant Hunting on Mount Owen.

luS|^MO"NGST my many mountain excury^Ply sions in search of botanical rarities, fFiwA^ m^ excurs^ on t° Mount Owen was «gj(<=£i the most interesting, and the one to which I had looked forward with the liveliest anticipations. My climb up Mount Mantell the previous week had been fruitful in result, and Mount Murchison was new ground for the botanist, and yielded some plants of considerable interest; but Mount Owen was the centre of my desires, and my experiences on its slopes may prove of interest. It wbb " Nelson Jubilee " time, and the coach leaving Longford was packed with no less than twenty-three passengers, and as I was No. Twenty-three, I had to squeeze myself in amongst' the luggage, and take a wellnourished boy of considerable avoirdupois upon my knee. My destination was the Owen Junction, and, on arriving there, I was glad enough to stretch my cramped limbs, as I busied myself in making preparations for the next stage of the journey. An athletic young fellow named Weir agreed to accompany me ; as he had ever scaled Mount Owen he was glad of Vol. VI.— No. 6.-23.

the opportunity. We loaded a pack horse with our blankets and provisions, and Weir elected to ride, whilst I, -with my camera slung over my shoulder, strode along beside him en route for the old deserted Owen township, which is gradually decaying away at the foot of the mountain. The road is formed for about eight miles, and after topping a considerable saddle crosses Baigent's Run, a holding which for the greater part of the year is left to look after itself, but could be made into a beautiful property. The road here is corduroyed in places, and everyone knows what sort of travelling it is over a road made on these lines when it is out of repair ; it has many creek crossings, and follows the Owen River in many of its windings. On some of the swamp lands through which we passed I noticed numerous large patches of Anthericum, a member of the lily order, but the bright yellow flowers were over, and all had gone to seed. We were not long in reaching the old township, which at one time swarmed with several hundred busy miners, and is now given over to the wood-hens and rats.

Desolation reigns supreme ! We took possession of the Enterprise, the best hotel, without challenge. The reason for our choice was that Tattersall's which is further on, chanced to be without a roof at the time, and our hotel had a paddock for the horse. My photograph of the house was uufortunately double-banked upon a plate which had already received an impression of Mount Murchison, with rather a grotesque effect; but a friend came to my aid, and painted the view as well as he could with the material at his command, and I

Oar next business was fixing our camp for the night, and as the landlord was absent, we took the liberty of re-furnishing a front room, which boasted a few panes of glass in the window frame, and converted it into the guest chamber. Two bedsteads were dragged out of adjoining rooms, and on these we placed spring mattresses made of fresh manuka and beech tops, which we cut with billhooks, considerately left handy in the bar. I found a tent-fly hanging over a doorway, "which, with a blanket, made an ideal bed. We wanted to air our clothes,

afterwards photographed his picture. We pat our steed into the paddock at the hack of the house, and made a pretence of fencing him in with some upended wheelbarrows andjbits of scantling stuck into the old fence, here and there* and our efforts were eminently successful, and completely imposed upon the animal, for he was still in the enclosure on our return next evening ; had he but rubbed his nose lightly against the fence the whole structure would have -collapsed.

and I was even able to trot out a clotheshorse for the purpose. It will be observed that our wants were well attended to in this convenient and accommodating camping place. Chairs, which had once been cane-bottomed, lay or stood about, cracked and broken glasses were still en evidence upon the bar, whilst piles of quartz specimens were stacked underneath, and there was a bottle of sauce and an unopened tin of sardines in a cupboard. The license was still posted upon the wall, and from it

we learned that one Myles Nixon had obtained the renewal of a ten o'clock license for the Enterprise Hotel in the year 1889. From the "Handbook of Mines" I discovered that fourteen mining leases had been applied for between the years 1882 and 1886, and that there was a population of about three hundred in the township. The remains of two batteries still stand, one at the lower, and the other at the upper township, and we explored one of the tunnels, which is now falling in. Both gold

a perennial thirst from the number of broken bottles lying about. Their houses are now falling to decay, but the apple trees which they planted are still flourishing, and the wood-hens attend to the gooseberries as they ripen. In one house the skeletons of four bullocks lie on the floor — they are the remains of four beasts which took shelter there from a snowstorm, and trapped themselves by pushing to the door, and perished miserably of starvation.

We fouud a safe which we made an effort

and silver were mined for here, but the claims turning'out duffers, many Nelsonians gained dearly-bought experience. The Owen River is described as "a receptacle for all the rocks and minerals in the district. Blocks of granite, quartz, limestone, sandstone, slate, marble, iron ore with garnets and some gold are to be found in it, also indications of coal, galena, and antimony." The miners there must have suffered from

to " burgle," but rust had rendered it burglar proof, and it defied all our attempts to open it. The place was not quite deserted, as the whole wood-hen tribe seemed to be congregated there, and later in the evening numerous mosquitoes called, and forced their company npon us. As I lay in my bed and mused on tbe ruin around me, and the busy scenes which had formerly been enacted there, I seemed to hear the shades of departed diggers rapping on the bar and

■waiting impatiently for their glasses to be filled, only to find that it was the noise made by some hungry wood-hens worrying a chop bone on the kitchen floor. They came in through the fireplace, as the chimney had fallen out. At the first tui's call in the morning we were on the alert preparing for our climb up the rugged-faced mountain. A lovely star-lit dawn greeted us, and we set out just as day was breaking.

I had discarded cloth clothes for mountain work, and "was now clothed in dungaree — copper fastened, and guaranteed to stand a Be"vere strain, and I have learned to place complete confidence in it. It needs a wash before being used, as it will stain you blue wherever it touches, and I have seen some curious effects produced. With my plant press and luncheon in ray satchel, ard a trusty old staff in hand, I felt ready to overmount any obstacle that Mount Owen could place in my way. The face of the spur was nearly perpendicular for some hundreds of feet, and then we had the good fortune to strike a survey line, which did us the favour of seeing us right out to the clear country. Some thousand feet up I found a peculiar little orchis — Jdenochilvs gracilis —in fruit, growing out of the cushions of moss at the foot of tie beech

trees. On passing out of the timber belt there was a Btiffish bit of going, pretty well on hands and knees, through mountain flax and spear grass, before the main ridge was gained. Above us hung the great rocky bluff with its wrinkled and weather-stained precipices forming the prominent feature of Mount Owen as seen from the Buller Road. And what a climb it was up its scarred face, and what floral curios it nourished on its rough breast five thousand feet up ! There was the lovely Veronica liirifolia, forming a mat of purple bloom ; there wei*e the Celmisias,ov mountain daisies, in all their variety starring over the barren slopes, whilst in the rocky clefts flourished the Ranunculus insignia, with its handsome yellow globes and glossy, crenated leaves which sometimes measure eight inches across. A cairn of stones has been erected upon the summit of the bluff; and hidden amongst them, neck downwards, I discovered a bottle containing

slips of paper, from which we learned that Miss Baigent, Mr. Sampson and others had deposited them there in the year 1891. Having no writing materials with us, we were unable to leave our cards, so we carefully replaced the bottle as we found it.

From that poiut to the trig station is a thousand feet or more of really hard climbing, so we decided that lnncheon would tone us up for the final effort, and we commenced a search for water, but without result. We descended into a valley which looked green and promising, but not a drop of the precious fluid could we discover. In our Bearch for water we came 'across the boDe of a moa lying under a sheltering shelf of rock. It was a sternum, and too much weather-worn to be of any value, but I hear that good specimens have been found on the mountain from time to time. I also found a most delicate little fern called the Fragilis

growing amongst the rough boulders, where it must be snow-hidden the greater part of the year. What an apparently unsuitable locality for such a hot-house-looking form

to flourish ! But as a countryman at Home remarked, " Them places as looks least likely are often likelier than them as looks most likeliest !" Up in these storm-swept and barrenlooking peaks it is surprising the delicacy of some of the floral forms, for most of the rough scars are dotted over with patches of exquisite flowers, and some of the Alpine meadows outrival many a garden in the wealth of their floral ornament. For the most part the blooms are pure white, but those of the Ranunculi are golden yellow, whilst the different shades of purple and lilac of the Veronicas with the native blue bell, interspersed with the yellow of the great flower spikes of the spear grasses, lend colour and variety. Some Alpine flowers are delicately perfumed, whilst others are devoid of scent, and there are plants which form patches and humps on the surface of the ground, and are known to Alpine climbers as " vegetable sheep." Sometimes when lazing on a mountain elope with a bunch of snow grass for a

lounge, and bathed in the soft Alpine sunshine, I indulge in daydreams and poetic fancy, and it seems to me that after a time the plant collector becomes, as it were, one of the initiated, and the flowers seem to greet him with a nod, and wink their starry eyes, and welcome him as one who knows and understands, and they yield up their secrets, and friendly relations are established right away. But these are idle fancies, and we were thirsty in a land where there was no water. We ate our luncheon drymouthed save for the juice of some canned fruit which I had carried up, and we were contemplating a further descent in search of water when a wild halloo from Weir proclaimed the discovery of a cave with snow gleaming white in its recesses. Our fruit can was now brought into requisition, and was soon packed with frozen snow and placed over a fire of dried grass, and the resulting fluid, although smoked, was to us as the nectar to the gods. The last part of the journey was occupied in negotiating narrow rifts and fissures which seamed the limestone face in every direction. They looked deep and dark, and

many ended in caverns in which the snow was all that was visible. Careful climbing was needed, as once in these crevasse-like clefts there seemed to be no visible

" entrance out," as Pat puts it. Dry dSbris slides had to be clambered up, where the loose foothold made progress slow and laborious. From a narrow gully which we crossed three deer sprang out within a stone's throw of us, and bounded down the mountain side. We sat down and watched them bolt across the valley and mount the opposite spur, every now and then stopping to gaze intently at us, and then springing up a rocky gully, they gained the ridge and disappeared over a saddle in the direction of Mount Hope. What mountain climbers deer are ! At last the trig station was reached, some 6,100 feet or more in altitude, and we were rewarded for

could be traced as a silver line from its rise in the Spencer Banges to the Grorge, where Mount Mantell overshadows it. The Buller River was seen from its source in Lake Rotoiti threading its way past Kerr's Lake Station, and increasing in volume as it coursed past the Owen and Murchison. The view of the Spencer Eanges was one of the finest that I have seen, as every detail was sharply defined, and the sun glinted on the snowfields, and in the far distance the lofty peaks of Mount Franklin and Mount Humboldt gave character to the chain and completed the picture. All the summndiug country was bathed in the soft

our exertions by the extent and sublimity of the view with a perfectly cloudless sky and a horizon innocent of haze. Immediately around us were bluffs of barren limestone, weathered and scarred, and almost devoid of vegetation, although moths of many

varieties were to be seen, and the pretty butterfly, Erehia Butlerii, flitted hither and thither in considerable numbers. In the middle distance to the north Mount Arthur and the mountains at the head of the Karamea River were the most conspicuous objects, -whilst more to the eastward Tasman Bay was seen gleaming blue as an amethyst. To the south-west the Lyall Ranges formed a rugged line, and further south the Paparoas stood guard over the coast as far as the Grey Valley. The River Maruia could be followed south in its long winding course towards its source near the Cannibal Gorge, and the Matakitaki

the Owen was very freely imbibed as we lay with cur heads half buried in it. Camp was reached, and as Myles Dixon was not about, we were able to chalk up our score, and depart without the worry of settling an hotel bill. The eight miles across the flat was travelled at a good round pace, and our destination was reached before nightfall. I was hospitably entertained at Mrs. Edwards' accommodation house, and the next morning was driven back to my headquarters at Murchison by the belle of the Owen, as fair a travelling companion as one could wish, and thus my excursion ended well, proving successful from start to finish.

summer sunlight with hardly a zephyr stirring, and the scene was so tranquil and fair that it was with regret that we prepared to leave it. The anticipation of a big drink in the river below acted as a spur, and we came down in record time, and the cool water of