Sheep on Terms, Schedule and Explanation--Investment in Sheep-run--Risk
of Disease, and Laws upon the Subject--Investment in laying down Land in
English Grass--In Farming--Journey to Oxford--Journey to the Glaciers--
Remote Settlers--Literature in the Bush--Blankets and Flies--Ascent of
the Rakaia--Camping out--Glaciers--Minerals--Parrots--Unexplored Col--
Burning the Flats--Return.
February 10, 1860.--I must confess to being fairly puzzled to know what
to do with the money you have sent me. Everyone suggests different
investments. One says buy sheep and put them out on terms. I will
explain to you what this means. I can buy a thousand ewes for 1250
pounds; these I should place in the charge of a squatter whose run is
not fully stocked (and indeed there is hardly a run in the province
fully stocked). This person would take my sheep for either three, four,
five, or more years, as we might arrange, and would allow me yearly 2s.
6d. per head in lieu of wool. This would give me 2s. 6d. as the yearly
interest on 25s. Besides this he would allow me 40 per cent per annum
of increase, half male, and half female, and of these the females would
bear increase also as soon as they had attained the age of two years;
moreover, the increase would return me 2s. 6d. per head wool money as
soon as they became sheep. At the end of the term, my sheep would be
returned to me as per agreement, with no deduction for deaths, but the
original sheep would be, of course, so much the older, and some of them
being doubtless dead, sheep of the same age as they would have been will
be returned in their place.
I will subjoin a schedule showing what 500 ewes will amount to in seven
years; we will date from January, 1860, and will suppose the yearly
increase to be one-half male and one-half female.
Ewes Ewe Wether Ewe Wether Wethers Total
Lambs Lambs Hoggets Hoggets
1 year old }
January, }
1860 } 500-- -- -- -- -- 500
1861 500 100 100 -- -- -- 700
1862 500 100 100 100 100 -- 900
1863 600 120 120 100 100 100 1140
1864 700 140 140 120 120 200 1420
1865 820 164 164 140 140 320 1748
1866 960 192 192 164 164 460 2132
1867 1124 225 225 192 192 624 2582
The yearly wool money would be:-
Pounds s. d.
January, 1861 . . 2s. 6d. per head 62 10 0
1862 . . . . . . . . 87 10 0
1863 . . . . . . . . 112 10 0
1864 . . . . . . . . 142 10 0
1865 . . . . . . . . 177 10 0
1866 . . . . . . . . 218 10 0
1867 . . . . . . . . 266 10 0
Total wool money received . . . . 1067 10 0
Original capital expended . . . . 625 0 0
I will explain briefly the meaning of this.
We will suppose that the ewes have all two teeth to start with--two
teeth indicate one year old, four teeth two years, six teeth three
years, eight teeth (or full mouthed) four years. For the edification of
some of my readers as ignorant as I am myself upon ovine matters, I may
mention that the above teeth are to be looked for in the lower jaw and
not the upper, the front portion of which is toothless. The ewes, then,
being one year old to start with, they will be eight years old at the
end of seven years. I have only, however, given you so long a term that
you may see what would be the result of putting out sheep on terms
either for three, four, five, six, or seven years, according as you
like. Sheep at eight years old will be in their old age: they will
live nine or ten years--sometimes more, but an eight-year-old sheep
would be what is called a broken-mouthed creature; that is to say, it
would have lost some of its teeth from old age, and would generally be
found to crawl along at the tail end of the mob; so that of the 2582
sheep returned to me, 500 would be very old, 200 would be seven years
old, 200 six years old. All these would pass as old sheep, and not
fetch very much; one might get about 15s. a head for the lot all round.
Perhaps, however, you might sell the 200 six years old with the younger
ones. Not to overestimate, count these 700 old sheep as worth nothing
at all, and consider that I have 1800 sheep in prime order, reckoning
the lambs as sheep (a weaned lamb being worth nearly as much as a full-
grown sheep). Suppose these sheep to have gone down in value from 25s.
a head to 10s., and at the end of my term I realise 900 pounds. Suppose
that of the wool money I have only spent 62 pounds 10s. per annum, i.e.
ten per cent on the original outlay, and that I have laid by the
remainder of the wool money. I shall have from the wool money a surplus
of 630 pounds (some of which should have been making ten per cent
interest for some time); that is to say, my total receipts for the sheep
should be at the least 1530 pounds. Say that the capital had only
doubled itself in the seven years, the investment could not be
considered a bad one. The above is a bona-fide statement of one of the
commonest methods of investing money in sheep. I cannot think from all
I have heard that sheep will be lower than 10s. a head, still some place
the minimum value as low as 6s. {3}
The question arises, What is to be done with one's money when the term
is out? I cannot answer; yet surely the colony cannot be quite used up
in seven years, and one can hardly suppose but that, even in that
advanced state of the settlement, means will not be found of investing a
few thousand pounds to advantage.
The general recommendation which I receive is to buy the goodwill of a
run; this cannot be done under about 100 pounds for every thousand
acres. Thus, a run of 20,000 acres will be worth 2000 pounds. Still,
if a man has sufficient capital to stock it well at once, it will pay
him, even at this price. We will suppose the run to carry 10,000 sheep.
The wool money from these should be 2500 pounds per annum. If a man can
start with 2000 ewes, it will not be long before he finds himself worth
10,000 sheep. Then the sale of surplus stock which he has not country
to feed should fetch him in fully 1000 pounds per annum; so that,
allowing the country to cost 2000 pounds, and the sheep 2500 pounds, and
allowing 1000 pounds for working, plant, buildings, dray, bullocks, and
stores, and 500 pounds more for contingencies and expenses of the first
two years, during which the run will not fully pay its own expenses--for
a capital of 6000 pounds a man may in a few years find himself possessed
of something like a net income of 2000 pounds per annum. Marvellous as
all this sounds, I am assured that it is true. {4} On the other hand,
there are risks. There is the uncertainty of what will be done in the
year 1870, when the runs lapse to the Government. The general opinion
appears to be, that they will be re-let, at a greatly advanced rent, to
the present occupiers. The present rent of land is a farthing per acre
for the first and second years, a halfpenny for the third, and three
farthings for the fourth and every succeeding year. Most of the waste
lands in the province are now paying three farthings per acre. There is
the danger also of scab. This appears to depend a good deal upon the
position of the run and its nature. Thus, a run situated in the plains
over which sheep are being constantly driven from the province of
Nelson, will be in more danger than one on the remoter regions of the
back country. In Nelson there are few, if any, laws against
carelessness in respect of scab. In Canterbury the laws are very
stringent. Sheep have to be dipped three months before they quit
Nelson, and inspected and re-dipped (in tobacco water and sulphur) on
their entry into this province. Nevertheless, a single sheep may remain
infected, even after this second dipping. The scab may not be apparent,
but it may break out after having been a month or two in a latent state.
One sheep will infect others, and the whole mob will soon become
diseased; indeed, a mob is considered unsound, and compelled to be
dipped, if even a single scabby sheep have joined it. Dipping is an
expensive process, and if a man's sheep trespass on to his neighbour's
run he has to dip his neighbour's also. Moreover, scab may break out
just before or in mid-winter, when it is almost impossible, on the
plains, to get firewood sufficient to boil the water and tobacco (sheep
must be dipped whilst the liquid is at a temperature of not less than 90
degrees), and when the severity of the sou'-westers renders it nearly
certain that a good few sheep will be lost. Lambs, too, if there be
lambs about, will be lost wholesale. If the sheep be not clean within
six months after the information is laid, the sum required to be
deposited with Government by the owner, on the laying of such
information, is forfeited. This sum is heavy, though I do not exactly
know its amount. One dipping would not be ruinous, but there is always
a chance of some scabby sheep having been left upon the run unmustered,
and the flock thus becoming infected afresh, so that the whole work may
have to be done over again. I perceive a sort of shudder to run through
a sheep farmer at the very name of this disease. There are no four
letters in the alphabet which he appears so mortally to detest, and with
good reason.
Another mode of investment highly spoken of is that of buying land and
laying it down in English grass, thus making a permanent estate of it.
But I fear this will not do for me, both because it requires a large
experience of things in general, which, as you well know, I do not
possess, and because I should want a greater capital than would be
required to start a run. More money is sunk, and the returns do not
appear to be so speedy. I cannot give you even a rough estimate of the
expenses of such a plan. I will only say that I have seen gentlemen who
are doing it, and who are confident of success, and these men bear the
reputation of being shrewd and business-like. I cannot doubt,
therefore, that it is both a good and safe investment of money. My
crude notion concerning it is, that it is more permanent and less
remunerative. In this I may be mistaken, but I am certain it is a thing
which might very easily be made a mess of by an inexperienced person;
whilst many men, who have known no more about sheep than I do, have made
ordinary sheep farming pay exceedingly well. I may perhaps as well say,
that land laid down in English grass is supposed to carry about five or
six sheep to the acre; some say more and some less. Doubtless, somewhat
will depend upon the nature of the soil, and as yet the experiment can
hardly be said to have been fully tried. As for farming as we do in
England, it is universally maintained that it does not pay; there seems
to be no discrepancy of opinion about this. Many try it, but most men
give it up. It appears as if it were only bona-fide labouring men who
can make it answer. The number of farms in the neighbourhood of Christ
Church seems at first to contradict this statement; but I believe the
fact to be, that these farms are chiefly in the hands of labouring men,
who had made a little money, bought land, and cultivated it themselves.
These men can do well, but those who have to buy labour cannot make it
answer. The difficulty lies in the high rate of wages.
February 13.--Since my last I have been paying a visit of a few days at
Kaiapoi, and made a short trip up to the Harewood Forest, near to which
the township of Oxford is situated. Why it should be called Oxford I do
not know.
After leaving Rangiora, which is about 8 miles from Kaiapoi, I followed
the Harewood road till it became a mere track, then a footpath, and then
dwindled away to nothing at all. I soon found myself in the middle of
the plains, with nothing but brown tussocks of grass before me and
behind me, and on either side. The day was rather dark, and the
mountains were obliterated by a haze. "Oh the pleasure of the plains,"
I thought to myself; but, upon my word, I think old Handel would find
but little pleasure in these. They are, in clear weather, monotonous
and dazzling; in cloudy weather monotonous and sad; and they have little
to recommend them but the facility they afford for travelling, and the
grass which grows upon them. This, at least, was the impression I
derived from my first acquaintance with them, as I found myself steering
for the extremity of some low downs about six miles distant. I thought
these downs would never get nearer. At length I saw a tent-like object,
dotting itself upon the plain, with eight black mice as it were in front
of it. This turned out to be a dray, loaded with wool, coming down from
the country. It was the first symptom of sheep that I had come upon,
for, to my surprise, I saw no sheep upon the plains, neither did I see
any in the whole of my little excursion. I am told that this
disappoints most new-comers. They are told that sheep farming is the
great business of Canterbury, but they see no sheep; the reason of this
is, partly because the runs are not yet a quarter stocked, and partly
because the sheep are in mobs, and, unless one comes across the whole
mob, one sees none of them. The plains, too, are so vast, that at a
very short distance from the track, sheep will not be seen. When I came
up to the dray, I found myself on a track, reached the foot of the
downs, and crossed the little River Cust. A little river, brook or
stream, is always called a creek; nothing but the great rivers are
called rivers. Now clumps of flax, and stunted groves of Ti palms and
other trees, began to break the monotony of the scene. Then the track
ascended the downs on the other side of the stream, and afforded me a
fine view of the valley of the Cust, cleared and burnt by a recent fire,
which extended for miles and miles, purpling the face of the country, up
to the horizon. Rich flax and grass made the valley look promising, but
on the hill the ground was stony and barren, and shabbily clothed with
patches of dry and brown grass, surrounded by a square foot or so of
hard ground; between the tussocks, however, there was a frequent though
scanty undergrowth which might furnish support for sheep, though it
looked burnt up.
I may as well here correct an error, which I had been under, and which
you may, perhaps, have shared with me--native grass cannot be mown.
After proceeding some few miles further, I came to a station, where,
though a perfect stranger, and at first (at some little distance)
mistaken for a Maori, I was most kindly treated, and spent a very
agreeable evening. The people here are very hospitable; and I have
received kindness already upon several occasions, from persons upon whom
I had no sort of claim.
Next day I went to Oxford, which lies at the foot of the first ranges,
and is supposed to be a promising place. Here, for the first time, I
saw the bush; it was very beautiful; numerous creepers, and a luxuriant
undergrowth among the trees, gave the forest a wholly un-European
aspect, and realised, in some degree, one's idea of tropical vegetation.
It was full of birds that sang loudly and sweetly. The trees here are
all evergreens, and are not considered very good for timber. I am told
that they have mostly a twist in them, and are in other respects not
first rate.
* * *
March 24.--At last I have been really in the extreme back country, and
positively, right up to a glacier.
As soon as I saw the mountains, I longed to get on the other side of
them, and now my wish has been gratified.
I left Christ Church in company with a sheep farmer, who owns a run in
the back country, behind the Malvern Hills, and who kindly offered to
take me with him on a short expedition he was going to make into the
remoter valleys of the island, in hopes of finding some considerable
piece of country which had not yet been applied for.
We started February 28th, and had rather an unpleasant ride of twenty-
five miles, against a very high N.W. wind. This wind is very hot, very
parching, and very violent; it blew the dust into our eyes so that we
could hardly keep them open. Towards evening, however, it somewhat
moderated, as it generally does. There was nothing of interest on the
track, save a dry river-bed, through which the Waimakiriri once flowed,
but which it has long quitted. The rest of our journey was entirely
over the plains, which do not become less monotonous upon a longer
acquaintance; the mountains, however, drew slowly nearer, and by evening
were really rather beautiful. Next day we entered the valley of the
River Selwyn, or Waikitty, as it is generally called, and soon found
ourselves surrounded by the low volcanic mountains, which bear the name
of the Malvern Hills. They are very like the Banks Peninsula. We dined
at a station belonging to a son of the bishop's, and after dinner made
further progress into the interior. I have very little to record, save
that I was disappointed at not finding the wild plants more numerous and
more beautiful; they are few, and decidedly ugly. There is one beast of
a plant they call spear-grass, or spaniard, which I will tell you more
about at another time. You would have laughed to have seen me on that
day; it was the first on which I had the slightest occasion for any
horsemanship. You know how bad a horseman I am, and can imagine that I
let my companion go first in all the little swampy places and small
creeks which we came across. These were numerous, and as Doctor always
jumped them, with what appeared to me a jump about three times greater
than was necessary, I assure you I heartily wished them somewhere else.
However, I did my best to conceal my deficiency, and before night had
become comparatively expert without having betrayed myself to my
companion. I dare say he knew what was going on, well enough, but was
too good and kind to notice it.
At night, and by a lovely clear, cold moonlight, we arrived at our
destination, heartily glad to hear the dogs barking and to know that we
were at our journey's end. Here we were bona fide beyond the pale of
civilisation; no boarded floors, no chairs, nor any similar luxuries;
everything was of the very simplest description. Four men inhabited the
hut, and their life appears a kind of mixture of that of a dog and that
of an emperor, with a considerable predominance of the latter. They
have no cook, and take it turn and turn to cook and wash up, two one
week, and two the next. They have a good garden, and gave us a capital
feed of potatoes and peas, both fried together, an excellent
combination. Their culinary apparatus and plates, cups, knives, and
forks, are very limited in number. The men are all gentlemen and sons
of gentlemen, and one of them is a Cambridge man, who took a high
second-class a year or two before my time. Every now and then he leaves
his up-country avocations, and becomes a great gun at the college in
Christ Church, examining the boys; he then returns to his shepherding,
cooking, bullock-driving, etc. etc., as the case may be. I am informed
that the having faithfully learned the ingenuous arts, has so far
mollified his morals that he is an exceedingly humane and judicious
bullock-driver. He regarded me as a somewhat despicable new-comer (at
least so I imagined), and when next morning I asked where I should wash,
he gave rather a French shrug of the shoulders, and said, "The lake." I
felt the rebuke to be well merited, and that with the lake in front of
the house, I should have been at no loss for the means of performing my
ablutions. So I retired abashed and cleansed myself therein. Under his
bed I found Tennyson's Idylls of the King. So you will see that even in
these out-of-the-world places people do care a little for something
besides sheep. I was told an amusing story of an Oxford man shepherding
down in Otago. Someone came into his hut, and, taking up a book, found
it in a strange tongue, and enquired what it was. The Oxonian (who was
baking at the time) answered that it was Machiavellian discourses upon
the first decade of Livy. The wonder-stricken visitor laid down the
book and took up another, which was, at any rate, written in English.
This he found to be Bishop Butler's Analogy. Putting it down speedily
as something not in his line, he laid hands upon a third. This proved
to be Patrum Apostolicorum Opera, on which he saddled his horse and went
right away, leaving the Oxonian to his baking. This man must certainly
be considered a rare exception. New Zealand seems far better adapted to
develop and maintain in health the physical than the intellectual
nature. The fact is, people here are busy making money; that is the
inducement which led them to come in the first instance, and they show
their sense by devoting their energies to the work. Yet, after all, it
may be questioned whether the intellect is not as well schooled here as
at home, though in a very different manner. Men are as shrewd and
sensible, as alive to the humorous, and as hard-headed. Moreover, there
is much nonsense in the old country from which people here are free.
There is little conventionalism, little formality, and much liberality
of sentiment; very little sectarianism, and, as a general rule, a
healthy, sensible tone in conversation, which I like much. But it does
not do to speak about John Sebastian Bach's Fugues, or pre-Raphaelite
pictures.
To return, however, to the matter in hand. Of course everyone at
stations like the one we visited washes his own clothes, and of course
they do not use sheets. Sheets would require far too much washing. Red
blankets are usual; white show fly-blows. The blue-bottle flies blow
among blankets that are left lying untidily about, but if the same be
neatly folded up and present no crumpled creases, the flies will leave
them alone. It is strange, too, that, though flies will blow a dead
sheep almost immediately, they will not touch one that is living and
healthy. Coupling their good nature in this respect with the love of
neatness and hatred of untidiness which they exhibit, I incline to think
them decidedly in advance of our English bluebottles, which they
perfectly resemble in every other respect. The English house-fly soon
drives them away, and, after the first year or two, a station is seldom
much troubled with them: so at least I am told by many. Fly-blown
blankets are all very well, provided they have been quite dry ever since
they were blown: the eggs then come to nothing; but if the blankets be
damp, maggots make their appearance in a few hours, and the very
suspicion of them is attended with an unpleasant creepy crawly
sensation. The blankets in which I slept at the station which I have
been describing were perfectly innocuous.
On the morning after I arrived, for the first time in my life I saw a
sheep killed. It is rather unpleasant, but I suppose I shall get as
indifferent to it as other--people are by and by. To show you that the
knives of the establishment are numbered, I may mention that the same
knife killed the sheep and carved the mutton we had for dinner. After
an early dinner, my patron and myself started on our journey, and after
travelling for some few hours over rather a rough country, though one
which appeared to me to be beautiful indeed, we came upon a vast river-
bed, with a little river winding about it. This is the Harpur, a
tributary of the Rakaia, and the northern branch of that river. We were
now going to follow it to its source, in the hopes of being led by it to
some saddle over which we might cross, and come upon entirely new
ground. The river itself was very low, but the huge and wasteful river-
bed showed that there were times when its appearance must be entirely
different. We got on to the river-bed, and, following it up for a
little way, soon found ourselves in a close valley between two very
lofty ranges, which were plentifully wooded with black birch down to
their base. There were a few scrubby, stony flats covered with Irishman
and spear-grass (Irishman is the unpleasant thorny shrub which I saw
going over the hill from Lyttelton to Christ Church) on either side the
stream; they had been entirely left to nature, and showed me the
difference between country which had been burnt and that which is in its
natural condition. This difference is very great. The fire dries up
many swamps--at least many disappear after country has been once or
twice burnt; the water moves more freely, unimpeded by the tangled and
decaying vegetation which accumulates round it during the lapse of
centuries, and the sun gets freer access to the ground. Cattle do much
also: they form tracks through swamps, and trample down the earth,
making it harder and firmer. Sheep do much: they convey the seeds of
the best grass and tread them into the ground. The difference between
country that has been fed upon by any live stock, even for a single
year, and that which has never yet been stocked is very noticeable. If
country is being burnt for the second or third time, the fire can be
crossed without any difficulty; of course it must be quickly traversed,
though indeed, on thinly grassed land, you may take it almost as coolly
as you please. On one of these flats, just on the edge of the bush, and
at the very foot of the mountain, we lit a fire as soon as it was dusk,
and, tethering our horses, boiled our tea and supped. The night was
warm and quiet, the silence only interrupted by the occasional sharp cry
of a wood-hen, and the rushing of the river, whilst the ruddy glow of
the fire, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of our saddles
and blankets, formed a picture to me entirely new and rather impressive.
Probably after another year or two I shall regard camping out as the
nuisance which it really is, instead of writing about sombre forests and
so forth. Well, well, that night I thought it very fine, and so in good
truth it was.
Our saddles were our pillows and we strapped our blankets round us by
saddle-straps, and my companion (I believe) slept very soundly; for my
part the scene was altogether too novel to allow me to sleep. I kept
looking up and seeing the stars just as I was going off to sleep, and
that woke me again; I had also underestimated the amount of blankets
which I should require, and it was not long before the romance of the
situation wore off, and a rather chilly reality occupied its place;
moreover, the flat was stony, and I was not knowing enough to have
selected a spot which gave a hollow for the hip-bone. My great object,
however, was to conceal my condition from my companion, for never was a
freshman at Cambridge more anxious to be mistaken for a third-year man
than I was anxious to become an old chum, as the colonial dialect calls
a settler--thereby proving my new chumship most satisfactorily. Early
next morning the birds began to sing beautifully, and the day being thus
heralded, I got up, lit the fire, and set the pannikins to boil: we
then had breakfast, and broke camp. The scenery soon became most
glorious, for, turning round a corner of the river, we saw a very fine
mountain right in front of us. I could at once see that there was a
neve near the top of it, and was all excitement. We were very anxious
to know if this was the backbone range of the island, and were hopeful
that if it was we might find some pass to the other side. The ranges on
either hand were, as I said before, covered with bush, and these, with
the rugged Alps in front of us, made a magnificent view. We went on,
and soon there came out a much grander mountain--a glorious glaciered
fellow--and then came more, and the mountains closed in, and the river
dwindled and began leaping from stone to stone, and we were shortly in
scenery of the true Alpine nature--very, very grand. It wanted,
however, a chalet or two, or some sign of human handiwork in the fore-
ground; as it was, the scene was too savage.
All the time we kept looking for gold, not in a scientific manner, but
we had a kind of idea that if we looked in the shingly beds of the
numerous tributaries to the Harpur, we should surely find either gold or
copper or something good. So at every shingle-bed we came to (and every
little tributary had a great shingle-bed) we lay down and gazed into the
pebbles with all our eyes. We found plenty of stones with yellow specks
in them, but none of that rich goodly hue which makes a man certain that
what he has found is gold. We did not wash any of the gravel, for we
had no tin dish, neither did we know how to wash. The specks we found
were mica; but I believe I am right in saying that there are large
quantities of chromate of iron in the ranges that descend upon the
river. We brought down several specimens, some of which we believed to
be copper, but which did not turn out to be so. The principal rocks
were a hard, grey, gritty sandstone, interwoven with thin streaks of
quartz. We saw no masses of quartz; what we found was intermixed with
sandstone, and was always in small pieces. The sandstone, in like
manner, was almost always intermingled with quartz. Besides this
sandstone there was a good deal of pink and blue slate, the pink chiefly
at the top of the range, showing a beautiful colour from the river-bed.
In addition to this, there were abundance of rocks, of every gradation
between sandstone and slate--some sandstone almost slate, some slate
almost sandstone. There was also a good deal of pudding-stone; but the
bulk of the rock was this very hard, very flinty sandstone. You know I
am no geologist. I will undertake, however, to say positively that we
did not see one atom of granite; all the mountains that I have yet seen
are either volcanic or composed of this sandstone and slate.
When we had reached nearly the base of the mountains, we left our
horses, for we could use them no longer, and, crossing and recrossing
the stream, at length turned up through the bush to our right. This
bush, though very beautiful to look at, is composed of nothing but the
poorest black birch. We had no difficulty in getting through it, for it
had no undergrowth, as the bushes on the front ranges have. I should
suppose we were here between three and four thousand feet above the
level of the sea; and you may imagine that at that altitude, in a valley
surrounded by snowy ranges, vegetation would not be very luxuriant.
There was sufficient wood, however, to harbour abundance of parroquets--
brilliant little glossy green fellows, that shot past you now and again
with a glisten in the sun, and were gone. There was a kind of dusky
brownish-green parrot, too, which the scientific call a Nestor. What
they mean by this name I know not. To the un-scientific it is a rather
dirty-looking bird, with some bright red feathers under its wings. It
is very tame, sits still to be petted, and screams like a real parrot.
Two attended us on our ascent after leaving the bush. We threw many
stones at them, and it was not their fault that they escaped unhurt.
Immediately on emerging from the bush we found all vegetation at an end.
We were on the moraine of an old glacier, and saw nothing in front of us
but frightful precipices and glaciers. There was a saddle, however, not
above a couple of thousand feet higher. This saddle was covered with
snow, and, as we had neither provisions nor blankets, we were obliged to
give up going to the top of it. We returned with less reluctance, from
the almost absolute certainty, firstly, that we were not upon the main
range; secondly, that this saddle would only lead to the Waimakiriri,
the next river above the Rakaia. Of these two points my companion was
so convinced, that we did not greatly regret leaving it unexplored. Our
object was commercial, and not scientific; our motive was pounds,
shillings, and pence: and where this failed us, we lost all excitement
and curiosity. I fear that we were yet weak enough to have a little
hankering after the view from the top of the pass, but we treated such
puerility with the contempt that it deserved, and sat down to rest
ourselves at the foot of a small glacier. We then descended, and
reached the horses at nightfall, fully satisfied that, beyond the flat
beside the riverbed of the Harpur, there was no country to be had in
that direction. We also felt certain that there was no pass to the west
coast up that branch of the Rakaia, but that the saddle at the head of
it would only lead to the Waimakiriri, and reveal the true backbone
range farther to the west. The mountains among which we had been
climbing were only offsets from the main chain.
This might be shown also by a consideration of the volume of water which
supplies the main streams of the Rakaia and the Waimakiriri, and
comparing it with the insignificant amount which finds its way down the
Harpur. The glaciers that feed the two larger streams must be very
extensive, thus showing that the highest range lies still farther to the
northward and westward. The Waimakiriri is the next river to the
northward of the Rakaia.
That night we camped as before, only I was more knowing, and slept with
my clothes on, and found a hollow for my hip-bone, by which contrivances
I slept like a top. Next morning, at early dawn, the scene was most
magnificent. The mountains were pale as ghosts, and almost sickening
from their death-like whiteness. We gazed at them for a moment or two,
and then turned to making a fire, which in the cold frosty morning was
not unpleasant. Shortly afterwards we were again en route for the
station from which we had started. We burnt the flats as we rode down,
and made a smoke which was noticed between fifty and sixty miles off. I
have seen no grander sight than the fire upon a country which has never
before been burnt, and on which there is a large quantity of Irishman.
The sun soon loses all brightness, and looks as though seen through
smoked glass. The volumes of smoke are something that must be seen to
be appreciated. The flames roar, and the grass crackles, and every now
and then a glorious lurid flare marks the ignition of an Irishman; his
dry thorns blaze fiercely for a minute or so, and then the fire leaves
him, charred and blackened for ever. A year or two hence, a stiff nor'-
wester will blow him over, and he will lie there and rot, and fatten the
surrounding grass; often, however, he shoots out again from the roots,
and then he is a considerable nuisance. On the plains Irishman is but a
small shrub, that hardly rises higher than the tussocks; it is only in
the back country that it attains any considerable size: there its trunk
is often as thick as a man's body.
We got back about an hour after sundown, just as heavy rain was coming
on, and were very glad not to be again camping out, for it rained
furiously and incessantly the whole night long. Next day we returned to
the lower station belonging to my companion, which was as replete with
European comforts as the upper was devoid of them; yet, for my part, I
could live very comfortably at either.