Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/98

21, 1860.] has been getting worse for some time, and I am paying more attention to the sky than to what is exactly underneath us, when bang! bang—with a quick jerk or two which makes one tremble for the springs, independently of almost throwing us out of the waggon—rouses us to a sense of our position.

What is the matter? Nothing at all, except that one of the small torrents, so numerous in this country, has overflowed in the course of the last day or two, and made an extempore channel, now dry, of the exact spot we are passing along for some ten or fifteen yards. The consequence is the displacing of the gravel, and the bringing to light of rocks, great in their “solidarité,” but enough to petrify Adam, as they rear their heads at intervals, with yawning chasms between. This difficulty surmounted, we come, in a few miles more, to a road or track through the bush, turning off from the main road. After some reconnoitering and discussion (for neither of us have been exactly to this place before), we decide that this must be the track which is to lead us to the domicile of “Jack.” We proceed painfully along a road which is formed, in different places, in addition to its native soil, of planks, faggots, and sometimes of nothing less than trunks of trees, placed side by side with a small space between. We are getting accustomed to all these varieties of road, and have crossed the fifth rickety bridge (we count the bridges, for our hearts rejoice at the fishing prospect held out by the brooks below them), when a fresh obstacle makes its unwelcome appearance.

A large fir, borne down, probably, by the weight of years, has fallen exactly across our road, with its dead branches sticking out to meet us like a natural chevaux de frise. We begin by a vigorous attack on the protruding branches, till we reduce the part which has to be crossed to a bare trunk, raised some three or four feet from the ground. The horse is unharnessed, and “led” across, and with much exertion, and putting of shoulders to the wheel, literally, we succeed in lifting the waggon over it. Nothing further stops us, till we come suddenly on an open space, which, pretty as it is, has a borrowed beauty from its contrast to the dark, almost impenetrable, shade we have been passing through lately. Just to the right of us is a low, substantial-looking, hut—built entirely of roughly sawn planks, with plastered clay to fill up the interstices between them. The chimney only, made of rough stone with the some natural mortar, contrasts with the dark grey of the wood. One or two farm-buildings, strongly resembling the hut, stand out against the dark foliage at the back. In front of the hut extends a gentle partly-cultivated slope—several acres of land have been “cleared”—some for years, evidently, others so lately that the blackened stumps of trees still appear gloomily above the luxuriant grass. Here and there a snake-fence winds over a ridge, and is hidden again in a hollow; close to the house a small stream rushes along over rocks to that lake, as large as our own Derwentwater, which washes the base of the slope I have spoken of. How it glitters in the sun’s rays, how perfect the effect of those points and islands, with their heavy rocks and dark foliage, which rise abruptly out of the dazzling water; and then that grey, yet distinct ridge which shuts in the view. Well, we have waited long enough outside; now let us see if the proprietor of this establishment, to whom a message had been sent by a “trader,” about a week before, is expecting us.

“Glad to see you, gentlemen, first-rate time for sport,” and the owner of the voice, dressed in the everywhere-to-be-met-with grey “homespun,” with a brilliant scarlet flannel shirt, and straw hat, rolls out of the door, and sets to work, without loss of