Page:Through South Westland.djvu/66

22 would put us up, and he lived at the very end of the Main South Road, where it can go no further because of an impassable country of deep fiords and mountains guarded by precipices. This sounded truly fascinating. Like the harbour-master, the parson was the last on the Coast. He might travel 200 miles and come to no parish boundary, and to visit those few sheep in the wilderness meant long days in the saddle and on foot in that lonely land. There was a doctor too, also the last, and from him we heard of a wild night ride, seventy miles through rivers and over mountains, to save a woman’s life; and how when he had done his share, he found there was no one to nurse her but men who knew not what to do; how he sat by her bed tending her for a week till the danger was past, and another urgent summons came for him to go back; of the terrible ride through flooded rivers, in storm and rain, ten hours on relays of horses; to fall ill at the end from exposure and fatigue.

But Ross was a very different place when the sun shone, and I forgot all the dismal impressions, and remembered only the kindness and friendliness of everybody. We left it on one of those wonderful balmy West Coast days of perfect blue—blue of sky and water, bush and mountain: is there anything in the whole world like it? Riding out of the town we passed the sluicing operations in full swing; saw the irresistible power of the great hose turned on the face of a hill that came crashing