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.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 55 of 167
Words from 14610 to 14883 of 45285