Now We Follow Up One Branch Of The Ashburton, And Commence Making
Straight For The Mountains; Still, However, We Are On The Same
Monotonous Plains, And Crawl Our Twenty Miles With Very Few Objects That
Can Possibly Serve As Landmarks.
It is wonderful how small an object
gets a name in the great dearth of features.
Cabbage-tree hill, half-
way between Main's and the Waikitty, is an almost imperceptible rise
some ten yards across and two or three feet high: the cabbage-trees
have disappeared. Between the Rakaia and Mr. M-'s station is a place
they call the half-way gully, but it is neither a gully nor half-way,
being only a grip in the earth, causing no perceptible difference in the
level of the track, and extending but a few yards on either side of it.
So between Mr. M-'s and the next halting-place (save two sheep-stations)
I remember nothing but a rather curiously shaped gowai-tree, and a dead
bullock, that can form milestones, as it were, to mark progress. Each
person, however, for himself makes innumerable ones, such as where one
peak in the mountain range goes behind another, and so on.
In the small River Ashburton, or rather in one of its most trivial
branches, we had a little misunderstanding with the bullocks; the
leaders, for some reason best known to themselves, slewed sharply round,
and tied themselves into an inextricable knot with the polars, while the
body bullocks, by a manoeuvre not unfrequent, shifted, or as it is
technically termed slipped, the yoke under their necks, and the bows
over; the off bullock turning upon the near side and the near bullock
upon the off. By what means they do this I cannot explain, but believe
it would make a conjuror's fortune in England. How they got the chains
between their legs and how they kicked to liberate themselves, how we
abused them, and, finally, unchaining them, set them right, I need not
here particularise; we finally triumphed, but this delay caused us not
to reach our destination till after dark.
Here the good woman of the house took us into her confidence in the
matter of her corns, from the irritated condition of which she argued
that bad weather was about to ensue. The next morning, however, we
started anew, and, after about three or four miles, entered the valley
of the south and larger Ashburton, bidding adieu to the plains
completely.
And now that I approach the description of the gorge, I feel utterly
unequal to the task, not because the scene is awful or beautiful, for in
this respect the gorge of the Ashburton is less remarkable than most,
but because the subject of gorges is replete with difficulty, and I have
never heard a satisfactory explanation of the phenomena they exhibit.
It is not, however, my province to attempt this. I must content myself
with narrating what I see.
First, there is the river, flowing very rapidly upon a bed of large
shingle, with alternate rapids and smooth places, constantly forking and
constantly reuniting itself like tangled skeins of silver ribbon
surrounding lozenge-shaped islets of sand and gravel.
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