Through South Westland/Part 2/Chapter 2

by A. Maud Moreland

CHAPTER II.

DEAD MAN’S GULLY.

A land of camps where seldom is sojourning,
Where men, like the dim fathers of our race,
Halt for a time, and next day unreturning,
Fare ever on apace.

Thomas W. Heney.

The long hot day slipped restfully away. The horses spent it down among the rich grass by the river, whither the Scorpion had made off the first opportunity—no bare paddocks for her ladyship! and we did not trouble to bring them back. New Year’s Day had come round, and we made a start in the afternoon. During the morning some welcome showers had fallen, and the yellow hills had just a tinge of green about them, and seemed more inviting than thirty miles of dusty road. Mr. Carthy’s directions were not very clear: we knew we had to get over the hills between the Lindis and the deep basins of the lakes and rivers beyond, and we started out confident of finding our way as we so often had done before. All went well till we came to a hollow in the hills blocked in front by steep tussock slopes, a gorge on the right winding down through ever wilder and wilder crags and towering hills. We tried in all directions for a track—the only one was down this forbidding gully. Further down we came to an old forsaken camp; holes and heaps of stones marked it as a gold-seeker’s abode, only a sod chimney and a pole with a tattered remnant of tent remained—all life had long ago departed elsewhere. Sometimes the track was lost, and reappeared again like a scratch across the hills—down, down we went, then halted; this was too bad for horses, and we returned, but seek as we would no other road was there, and we once more went down the gully. This time we got some distance further, and then into a narrow defile where the rock walls shut us in, and the track was choked with scrub and thorns. Through this we forced our way round an elbow in the gully, and saw a slight track rising over the shoulder of a shaley hill. We literally dragged ourselves and the horses up, and after a weary climb reached a summit, only to find it fell away in barren rocks to another nightmare of a gully, and behind us the one we had left appeared to become absolutely impassable. We turned up a spur to the left, and here we had to drag the horses up bare rock, the wise beasts coming along and making no fuss, and at last we came to a place where no four-footed beast with shoes might go, where, indeed, only a mountaineer could have climbed down. There was nothing for it but a return to the horrid gully, and from the height whereon we stood it seemed almost unattainable. My one wish was to get away from these dreadful hills and to get back to the inn, for it was eight o’clock, and we were not half-way over.

The sudden dark fell as we rode, and we had to trust the horses to get us back, which they did about 10 p.m.

Everyone was in bed; we turned the horses loose, and then tapped at the window, and soon the kind couple were fussing about, getting us supper and explaining we should not have turned down Dead Man’s Gully at all, but climbed the steep hills to the left and kept high all the time.

Next day we started by nine, and this time gained the summit of the range. It was very steep, so steep we had to climb beside the horses or even behind them; but what a view broke upon us from the top. Before us lay two arms of Lake Wanaka, embracing as it were a group of craggy mountains patched with snow; it was the deepest blue I have ever seen in water—ultramarine, with a dash of indigo. From the end of one arm issued a blue river, the Clutha, which wound in great loops and curves through brown plains of terrace formations, which descend from Lake Hawea in a succession of giant steps. They were dotted over with homesteads and cornfields and brilliant green oases. But we had to get down to the plains, and it looked as if we could jump from the crest where we were, it was so steep! At last we selected a spur. No English horse would go surely where those good beasts of ours hauled themselves up and let themselves down! It was all loose, broken stone and rock; a little dry thorn and thistles grew in places, and the sun beat fiercely from a cloudless sky, making the hillside a furnace. It was very slow work, but we got to the bottom without mishap, just where there had been a settler’s homestead. It was deserted, fallen to ruin; but there were gooseberries in the garden, and we added a supply to our lunch, and we ate it under some poplars, which gave a scanty shade. The lunch was scanty too. We had only some chocolate and the gooseberries (in an old bucket), and we sat with the bucket between us and enjoyed a refreshing, if frugal, meal!

And now came the final stage of the journey, Down to the purple-blue Clutha, across it in a stage-ferry, up the rise beyond on to a table-land with mountains nearly all round it, and some forty miles off, the Aspiring Range—the goal of our ambitions. There were the snow-fields and the high black peaks between the glaciers; clouds drifted round them, now hiding them, then rolling off till they stood out clear against the blue.

The plain around us was strangely brown and bare; a few sheep scattered over it, and the great brown hawks sailing overhead, the only signs of life. We had got into a world of rocky crags and jagged mountains, and the golden tussock was left behind. It was good-going on the road inches deep in brown dust, and we cantered fast, and passed several small settlements among their poplars and willows, and then came on a white, sandy road which led us through green and shady clumps of trees into the little town of Pembroke. We stopped on the rise above the lake. The scene was perfectly lovely: that wonderful blue sheet of water, stretching away and away thirty miles and more among mountains of a still tenderer tone of blue. How grandly they grouped themselves all round, how gloriously white the snows shone, but, above all, what a study in blues was that first view of Wanaka.

We rode up to a charming hotel with wide verandahs and a big fruit-garden about it, producing every variety of European fruit—a land of plenty indeed. I went inside, while Transome saw to the horses, and found a quaint, rambling old house, with all sorts of annexes running out into the garden, with glass doors in lieu of windows opening directly on to lawns and fruit trees. The pleasant-faced girl who came to me said they were quite full, but we could have the bathrooms!

I questioned could they spare them, and was assured in such weather most people bathed in the lake—at any rate we could go no further, and so it was settled; we were only too glad to be taken in at all.

Very soon we made our way to the lake-shore, where the water rippled on a beach of fine white pebbles, deepening four yards out sufficiently to float the small steamer that plies on the lake. The water was absolutely clear, and as we swam about we could look down through the cool, green depths to every stone on the bottom.

The hotel was excellent; full as it was, we were all attended to and made welcome; the delicious trout alone would have made an excellent dinner, but in addition there was turkey and black-currant pie—we made up our minds to spend a day or two here before we started on our further journey. Besides, we had to seek some kind of buggy to convey our stuff to camp. We found all had come safely, and awaited us in the hotel store.

Next day we rode out seventeen miles to try to get information as to the whereabouts of a hut, which we heard lay some thirty miles up the Matukituki valley. Of information we got little or none, and decided we must push on to a settler’s en route, who was reported as having been further up than anyone in Pembroke. This was Mr. Ross, and when we returned to the hotel we found he had been to see us, and left a pressing invitation to call at his house and lunch there on our way.