Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/100

74 mountains, of which glimpses may be seen up the wooded defile of the river, in places only accessible at peril of life and limb, quartz reefs abound, whence a few years ago fortunes were confidingly expected, but whereon, in such expectation, fortunes were spent unavailingly. They will tell with strong averment that payable quartz is there, but that difficult access bars all hope of profitable working; and they will tell also of creek workings, and haply show specimens of alluvial gold, heavy, water-worn flattened nuggets. “Mohikinui spuds” they fondly call them, which the miners dig out sometimes even with their sheath-knives from the rocky fissures and crevices, and from beneath the boulders of the mountain streams. Rough and Tumble Creek, and other far-off locales of similarly characteristic nomenclature. They will tell, too, many a sad story of loss of life by adventurous river men, who, voyaging up stream with supplies of food for their comrades, fossicking in the barren and rugged mountain solitudes, have been caught by sudden floods, their frail craft swamped, and they themselves lost in the swoop and swirl of the angry waters, wherein luckless mortal once engulfed is past all succour, and whence even the soddened and battered relics of mortality are rarely cast up again for “coroner’s ’quest” or Christian burial. Turning to more cheery theme, they will point to the river running broad and straight and strong oceanward over a deep bar that never shifts, a channel that scarcely slackens even in the hot and droughty summer months, for then the snow melts on the mountain sides, and a thousand beaks and burns and brawling linns pour in their ice cold tributes. Up that river there is coal in abundance close to the banks; there is a wide stretch, too, of agricultural and pastoral land, and in the hills gold. It is the ever present story, the country only wants opening up, and in patient expectation the handful of dwellers at the Mohikinui wait and watch, like the sun worshippers of old, for the first gleam of returning prosperity. After brief rest the traveller must prepare for the onward journey—a forced march which will brook no delay, unless he is willing to spend a night of discomfort in the bush. He will have his choice of two difficult onward routes, and will find it advisable to discard every vestige of impedimenta. The inland track entails the fording of the stream about three miles from the mouth, at a wide and rocky ford, the current strong, and waist deep in places, the water icy cold. This uncomfortable preliminary got through, the commencement of a mountain track is discerned, narrow, steep, and overhung with dank vegetation, and knee deep in mud. Some seventeen miles or more of this has to be traversed, without respite or variety, except where the route crosses and re-crosses the Glass-eye stream, which it does so often that the way-worn and disgusted traveller will wonder by what perversion of human ingenuity such a route was ever chosen or track constructed. His astonishment will not be diminished when he learns how many thousands of pounds were spent thereon, and debited to the cost of the Karamea Special Settlement, one of the pet projects of the Vogelian epoch. However, if he is wise he will not venture on that route, of which indeed traces in many spots are now rapidly becoming obliterated by mountain slips and fast growing vegetation, but will, in preference, choose the beach route, which, though perilous and difficult, has at least the charm of variety. Crossing the river by ferry boat