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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 105 of 167
Words from 28104 to 28368
of 45285
