Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/174

136 To speak less figuratively, Jack Doherty and I and two horses got both bogged and bushed up the Matakitaki River one dark and rainy night. He is a little fellow, but ‘game,’ and knows a bullock. But he doesn’t know, any more than I do, where to find six-to-the pound candles in the bush, these luxuries not being available, like manna, in the desert; so he and I burnt all the pocketsful of papers we had about us, first to get out of the bog and then to prevent our Rosinantes and ourselves from falling over precipices which do there abound. It was a discovery also that a little bit of burning paper added picturesqueness, if not cheerfulness, to the scene as we sat, smiling at our own grief, in the midst of mud and water, with saddles over our heads as a slight substitute for the shelter shed which the Government had failed to provide at that particular spot. The reporter’s best assistant—his note-book—had to be burnt with the rest, and, memory being a treacherous and lazy servant, it is compulsory on me to compromise with you by sending, meantime, some notes relative to the Lyell reef only, for these I preserved. At another time you may get some memoranda of the surroundings of the sources of the Buller, of the circumstances under which they were seen, and of the remarkable places and people which are to be encountered in a journey overland. You may.

“The Lyell is not a river. It is a creek—a little creek. By the miner it would be estimated, during ordinary circumstances, as containing just a few Government heads of water. By your correspondent it was estimated as just being big enough, in one or two places near the township, to afford a comfortable, if somewhat cold bath of a morning. But when the rain falls, as it can fall sometimes in these parts, the peculiarities of the country through which the Lyell runs assist the rain in converting it into a roaring mountain torrent compared with which even the rush of water in the Buller seems subdued. Running in a narrow course by the foot of high hills, and stemmed by the Buller, it often rises 40 ft., and roars in proportion. Its outlet is narrowed by a steep rocky spur, which is most precipitous on the side next the Buller. On the creek side of the spur there is some slightly sloping ground, and upon this slope is built the small township of the Lyell. The township, as seen from the ferryhouse on the opposite bank of the Buller, consists solely of Sloan’s hotel, and Sloan’s hotel is a little snuggery such as you do not see or enter, either before or after, during the whole journey from Westport, until you reach the order and civilisation of the Nelson side, first represented at the head of the Motueka Valley by Mr M‘Farlane, his house, and his probably significant signboard ‘Let Glasgow Flourish.’ Built of galvanised iron, and situated on the summit of the spur, Sloan’s small house is prominent, and, amid the sombre surroundings of dark green bush, rather pretty. But it does not constitute the entire township. When you have been ferried across the Buller by Joe Sullivan—a competent boatman of continental birth and of unpronounceable name, which his wife and friends have thus abbreviated, regardless of the feelings of his mother and his country—you ascend a steep sideling, and enter the township proper. Excuse for a few sentences the language of the showman. You see before you the main street of the town. It is at least thirty paces in length. To the right you behold the store formerly kept by Mr Florian Adank, and now in charge