Page:Picturesque New Guinea.djvu/102



HE order for marching being given, off started our train of sixteen porters in Indian file, making straight for a steep hill rising a little way back from the station, whilst the guide, my assistant, and myself, mounted on our steeds, strike off on a tract leading in a northerly direction, by an easier gradient, to a gap in the coast range. By making this little détour we spare our horses at the outset of the journey—a most prudent precaution, as we speedily discovered. After traversing a couple of miles of tolerably level plain, densely covered with fine kangaroo grass, we get into a country wherein undulations rise into ridges, ridges into hills, and hills into ranges so steep that no horse save one thoroughly