Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/177

Rh of Mr M‘Lean, for Mr Paterson and others at Westport. Beyond it stands the store of Mr Andrew Todd. First on your left is the shop of Mr Louis Pensini—a most excellent man and butcher. Skilled in the use of the knife, and liberal in the exercise of his hospitality, he is an ornament to the place and his profession. His neighbour is a ‘snob’—an estimable cordwainer, who amiably accepts his name as the proper English name for the representatives of his trade. In front and upon the street-line, if the township should ‘go ahead,’ and be surveyed, stands the store of Mr James Ryan, and inside of it, sound in his native proclivities, if not upon his native heath, stands one whose name’s Montgomery. Behind it are scattered some houses and tents—the nucleus of the architecture which may yet adorn the terrace which extends thence along the creek side. Turn you to the right, and you ascend another sloping and sometimes sloppy sideling; pass a tenement of a shoemaker whose name is ‘Schneider;’ then the hut of a news-agent, Charley Cohen; then ‘Peter the Greek;’ and then you enter Sloan’s. And now, having brought you thither, do as I desire you to do—refresh yourself.

“One’s first instinct, after refreshment, is to inquire of the landlord how far it is to the reef, and in what direction lies the road thereto. He takes the anxious inquirer to the gable of his house, and points to a series of spurs or mountain sides which form the western watershed of the Lyell Creek. He points to the biggest and most distant of these, and indicates a spot somewhat near the clouds as the probable height to be attained and the distance to be overcome. He subdues one’s exaggerated notions as to the distance by stating that it is only two miles and nine chains; but be not deceived thereby. No doubt he may be literally and actually accurate, for he measured the track by tape, but consider always the difference between walking two miles up a ladder and walking the same distance on a horizontal plane. After an intimate acquaintance with the road, I venture to say that any of your readers would, for the same money, prefer to walk six miles of decent road than climb these two. I speak from experience. ‘If any one doubts my word,’ let him go and do likewise. How men can, for month after month wearied with working all the week, and with hope deferred making the heart sick, carry back burdens of mining materials and provisions over these hills as a species of Sabbath rest, must be incomprehensible to any one who has not read and believed that ‘by faith you may remove mountains.’

“I started with little Willy Sloan, the host’s son, as the best available Alpine guide. In charge of this noble young person, I went on my way to the reef. For the first half mile or more, the track is on the right-hand side of the Lyell, going up, and it is a fair sideling till you reach a low spur formed by a sharply dipping reef of slaty rock. This is in the vicinity of a place known as the ‘Maori bar,’ where rich pockets of gold were picked in times gone by. I cross the creek by a log which spans the stream, and the intelligent guide introduces me to what he indicates to be the continuation of the track. It seems to be standing on its end, with a slight tendency to overhang, but it has to be mounted, if the journey is to be made, and ultimately it is accomplished, after a free use of lungs and language. The existing difficulty of this portion of the track could,