Loading Dray--Bullocks--Want of Roads--Banks Peninsula--Front and Back Ranges of Mountains--River-beds--Origin of the Plains--Terraces--Tutu--Fords--Floods--Lost Bullocks--Scarcity of Features on the Plains--Terraces--Crossing the Ashburton--Change of Weather--Roofless Hut--Brandy-keg.
I completed the loading of my dray on a Tuesday afternoon in the early part of October,1860,and determined on making Main's accommodation-house that night.Of the contents of the dray I need hardly speak,though perhaps a full enumeration of them might afford no bad index to the requirements of a station;they are more numerous than might at first be supposed--rigidly useful and rarely if ever ornamental.
Flour,tea,sugar,tools,household utensils few and rough,a plough and harrows,doors,windows,oats and potatoes for seed,and all the usual denizens of a kitchen garden;these,with a few private effects,formed the main bulk of the contents,amounting to about a ton and a half in weight.I had only six bullocks,but these were good ones,and worth many a team of eight;a team of eight will draw from two to three tons along a pretty good road.Bullocks are very scarce here;none are to be got under twenty pounds,while thirty pounds is no unusual price for a good harness bullock.They can do much more in harness than in bows and yokes,but the expense of harness and the constant disorder into which it gets,render it cheaper to use more bullocks in the simpler tackle.
Each bullock has its name,and knows it as well as a dog does his.
There is generally a tinge of the comic in the names given to them.
Many stations have a small mob of cattle from whence to draw their working bullocks,so that a few more or a few less makes little or no difference.They are not fed with corn at accommodation-houses,as horses are;when their work is done,they are turned out to feed till dark,or till eight or nine o'clock.A bullock fills himself,if on pretty good feed,in about three or three and a half hours;he then lies down till very early morning,at which time the chances are ten to one that,awakening refreshed and strengthened,he commences to stray back along the way he came,or in some other direction;accordingly,it is a common custom,about eight or nine o'clock,to yard one's team,and turn them out with the first daylight for another three or four hours'feed.
Yarding bullocks is,however,a bad plan.They do their day's work of from fifteen to twenty miles,or sometimes more,at one spell,and travel at the rate of from two and a half to three miles an hour.
The road from Christ Church to Main's is metalled for about four and a half miles;there are fences and fields on both sides,either laid down in English grass or sown with grain;the fences are chiefly low ditch and bank planted with gorse,rarely with quick,the scarcity of which detracts from the resemblance to English scenery which would otherwise prevail.The copy,however,is slatternly compared with the original;the scarcity of timber,the high price of labour,and the pressing urgency of more important claims upon the time of the small agriculturist,prevent him,for the most part,from attaining the spick-and-span neatness of an English homestead.Many makeshifts are necessary;a broken rail or gate is mended with a piece of flax,so,occasionally,are the roads.I have seen the Government roads themselves being repaired with no other material than stiff tussocks of grass,flax,and rushes:this is bad,but to a certain extent necessary,where there is so much to be done and so few hands and so little money with which to do it.
After getting off the completed portion of the road,the track commences along the plains unassisted by the hand of man.Before one,and behind one,and on either hand,waves the yellow tussock upon the stony plain,interminably monotonous.On the left,as you go southward,lies Banks Peninsula,a system of submarine volcanoes culminating in a flattened dome,little more than 3000feet high.Cook called it Banks Island,either because it was an island in his day,or because no one,to look at it,would imagine that it was anything else.Most probably the latter is the true reason;though,as the land is being raised by earthquakes,it is just possible that the peninsula may have been an island in Cook's days,for the foot of the peninsula is very little above the sea-level.It is indeed true that the harbour of Wellington has been raised some feet since the foundation of the settlement,but the opinion here is general that it must have been many centuries since the peninsula was an island.
On the right,at a considerable distance,rises the long range of mountains which the inhabitants of Christ Church suppose to be the backbone of the island,and which they call the Snowy Range.The real axis of the island,however,lies much farther back,and between it and the range now in sight the land has no rest,but is continually steep up and steep down,as if Nature had determined to try how much mountain she could place upon a given space;she had,however,still some regard for utility,for the mountains are rarely precipitous--very steep,often rocky and shingly when they have attained a great elevation,but seldom,if ever,until in immediate proximity to the West Coast range,abrupt like the descent from the top of Snowdon towards Capel Curig or the precipices of Clogwyn du'r arddu.The great range is truly Alpine,and the front range occasionally reaches an altitude of nearly 7000feet.
