companions of route. We rumbled away upon a road after Christina Rosetti’s poem, but, unhappily, we did not find it winding uphill all the way.
We passed a solitary cattleman at times, or now a beaming Maori. But, for the most part, we had the road to ourselves. Again we would run through one of the cool knots of trees that are enigmas of landscape, and often found an old house with its crudities of settlers’ design, blended into wonderful pictures by creepers and wilderness gardens. These old houses strike a strange and pathetic note in this young land. They are so few and widespread—like aged and lonely women on the roadway of youth.
The stock-drover ploughed the dusty road with the innumerable hoofs of his charge; they raised a cloud that for a moment hid the great expanse of undulating country. The coach, laden both with passengers and mail from Otiria, rumbled down the hills and through the fertile valleys that were lost in a haze of blue. We soon pulled up with a flourish and show of importance before the hotel. The bullocks which we had passed on the way, now reappeared, a little more weary of their task, and bending beneath their unenviable load; they added a primitive atmosphere, being driven merely by a stockwhip and a curse.
Ohaeawai is almost surrounded by great ranges of hills.
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