Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/168

 treacherous and swift, comes dashing down from its snowy source amid the glaciers, carrying its rolling burden of shingle with it. The bridge is protected by flanking buttresses running up stream. These are simply wooden coffer-dams filled with shingle and boulders. What a wild waste of shingle bars and drifted wrack fills the valley! The stream runs now in myriads of silvery threads; but in flood-time what a mad surging rush of foaming water is here! It is then fully two miles across and resistless in its might.

The snowy peaks are now shrouding themselves in misty mantles, as if to protect their hoarded crystals from the Sun-god's seductive touch. The plains below are bathed in sunshine, but far out to seaward, Heaven's murky battalions are gathering, and the air is hushed and still, as if presaging an impending storm.

At Orari, with its snug farms, and belts of plantations, the train disgorges a vulture-like crowd of betting-men. A little ramshackle erection, which local pride has dignified with the title of grand stand, decorated with bits of bunting, sufficiently discloses the attraction which has brought the jackals hither.

Betting and gambling blights the kingly sport here, as it does so much all over the colonies. The degrading influence of the betting-ring lowers the moral tone of the country, and vast sums are withdrawn from legitimate uses to keep in luxury a set of unscrupulous parasites who batten on industry and clog the wheels of healthy progress.