Page:Emeraldhoursinne00lowtiala.djvu/139

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Stop sign next to a dirt road with houses and buildings on each side, and power poles on the left-hand side

Chapter XVII.


REEFTON AND GREYMOUTH.

The tyrant ratas, grim and bold,
Rose crimson from their deathly kiss,
While kowhais flowering yellow gold
That graced man’s paradise of old,
Were starred with snowy clematis.”

Westport was still mournfully bewailing his ugliness when we left on Monday morning at half-past seven, but to our unbounded joy the mist rolled away soon after we had re-entered the Buller Gorge. It was rather fun to retrace the road we had travelled on Saturday and see it from the opposite direction, and as the sun was shining now we appreciated its beauties more.

Captain Greendays had taken measures to prevent a repetition of our shabby reception at the Inangahua Junction Hotel; consequently we walked down to the river directly the coach arrived there, and had a picnic luncheon on the bank.

Then we changed into another coach, for another man serves the road between Inangahua and Reefton. For the first hour or two the road ran through more of the same pretty woodland that clothes the country between Motupiko and Inangahua Junction; then there were tracts, gradually increasing in size, where the “bush” had been “cleared,” and this sort of country, until the farms have

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