Page:Through South Westland.djvu/159

Rh curve in front I felt sure would be our last. I still pulled with all my strength, but a snaffle-bit with single ring is of little use on a bolting horse. To my intense relief he slowed down before we reached that buttress. I waited for Transome, somewhat shaken, with a feeling that the sooner we got out of this the better. There was just room for him to pass me, and he took the lead, and we started the long descent very soberly.

We began to catch glimpses now of a vast tree-grown plain with high hills round it, forming a wide amphitheatre. Far away a faint-blue melting into the whitish sky showed where the sea lay. It looked a fair and beautiful land. And now the hills changed character: the forest ended on their lower slopes; bare rumpled outlines, clothed with yellow grass, took the place of the tangle of the bush. Blazing sunshine here reigned supreme, the trees no longer dripped with moisture, and the ground was dry. It was two o’clock, and for two hours we rode across the flat, sometimes crossing gentle streams, where plenty of soft green grass grew under the shade of spreading trees. Fat red cattle raised curious eyes, and gazed enquiringly as we cantered past. But no sign of farm or dwelling was there in all that wide land of plenty. And then quite suddenly we had left it all. This beautiful land of shade and sunshine and rippling water gave place to a vast flax swamp, waving before us for miles. Here and there ragged pines secured a foot-hold on some knoll, and manuka and