Page:Through South Westland.djvu/240

146 We lunched with Mrs. Ross, who feasted us most royally and supplied one or two wants in our equipment—we had forgotten to buy a bucket, and she gave us the inevitable kerosene tin with a wire handle, a bottle of milk, and a jar of cream—and we set forth, but not before Mr. Ross had given us his parting instruction: “You won’t find much of a road—it’s mostly washed away, and the bridges over the creeks are not always to be depended on; ten miles up you come to the Niger Hut: take my advice and sleep there. This heat will melt the snows and bring down a flood, and the river goes down at night. The ford is a mile or two further on than the hut, and you must make your camp at the Old Homestead—a couple of miles along the far side of the river.”

I think in all that summer of perfect weather, no day stands out in my memory more fair than the day we drove up the Matukituki valley. Sunshine blazed over everything, larks sang as even at home they hardly know how to sing; soft breezes rippled the blue reaches of water that stretched among the sand and stones of the wide river-bed; and, as we went, our spirits overflowed in bursts of laughter and jokes about our ramshackle old chariot.

We started gaily down a grassy track—no longer a made road, for nobody lives beyond the flat except one old Highlander and his family. The saw-mills that once made a busy little