Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/126

96 for my laborious life, that carries me through scenes whose beauty will dwell in my memory for ever.”

Arriving in Westland, Mr Clarke concluded by saying, “The people are warmhearted, free-handed, and intelligent, and have crowded to my lectures in an astonishing fashion. Everywhere I have had a cordial welcome, and substantial tokens of their appreciation.”

“The Vagabond” visited the West Coast in the month of July 1883, as “special” for the Australasian newspaper. His communications appeared under the head of “Round About New Zealand.” His start from Christchurch and his experiences to the summit of Porter’s Pass are narrated as follows:—“My last day in Christchurch it blows great guns, and snow and hail and sleet complete my discomfort. Kind friends sympathise with me on the journey I am about to undertake, and urge me to tarry. Willingly I would do so. I long to see more of Christchurch and its people, but a warrior of the press must onward. This must not be my Capua; Rome on the West Coast awaits me; the passage of the Southern Alps and the Otira Gorge is before me. They pity me, these kind friends, and advise me to lay in a stock of blankets for the journey. I compromise by buying a woollen scarf of the most striking combination of hideous colours. But I confess I do not like it, as I sit up late in the comfortable smoking room listening to the howling of the wind. My only companion is the supremely ugly, and, therefore, of his kind, consummately beautiful, English bulldog Baby, who sits on another chair, and listens with the greatest attention to a case of international copyright which I read from the Albany Law Journal. Baby criticises this by licking his jaws and whining ferociously, as who would say, ‘Let me at these publishers, and they shall feel my opinion.’ I shall always remember Baby’s sympathy with pleasure. It is a cold frosty morning when I leave the house of the genial Coker for an early start by the train at 8 a.m. In the cars one’s idea is to coil up as warm as possible, and go to sleep. But 14 miles away on the south line one has to change at Rolleston Junction, and as I have no desire to be carried back to Dunedin, I must perforce keep awake. When I get into the local train, I find two other passengers. I eye them suspiciously, as they do me. Are they going overland, and will there be a contest for the box seat? We are going west now onward across the Canterbury plains to the Southern Alps, the snow on which lies low, showing the severity of the weather. Cultivated fields and English grass paddocks on each side. Smart settlements, with churches and schools. There is a junction to White Cliff, where there is coal. Next comes the township of Sheffield, rather a misnomer in an agricultural country. Then we arrive at Springfield, forty-three miles from Christchurch, and the terminus of the line. Here we have an early dinner at noon, before taking the five-horse coach over the first stage of the journey to the West Coast.

“The half hour that we wait Mr Cassidy utilises by showing me his horses and dogs. Both are warmly clothed. To see the greyhounds running about in thick coats is a sign I am in a country where there is a winter. The mayor and principal citizens interview