The Night Was
Warm And Quiet, The Silence Only Interrupted By The Occasional Sharp Cry
Of A Wood-Hen, And
The rushing of the river, whilst the ruddy glow of
the fire, the sombre forest, and the immediate foreground of
Our saddles
and blankets, formed a picture to me entirely new and rather impressive.
Probably after another year or two I shall regard camping out as the
nuisance which it really is, instead of writing about sombre forests and
so forth. Well, well, that night I thought it very fine, and so in good
truth it was.
Our saddles were our pillows and we strapped our blankets round us by
saddle-straps, and my companion (I believe) slept very soundly; for my
part the scene was altogether too novel to allow me to sleep. I kept
looking up and seeing the stars just as I was going off to sleep, and
that woke me again; I had also underestimated the amount of blankets
which I should require, and it was not long before the romance of the
situation wore off, and a rather chilly reality occupied its place;
moreover, the flat was stony, and I was not knowing enough to have
selected a spot which gave a hollow for the hip-bone. My great object,
however, was to conceal my condition from my companion, for never was a
freshman at Cambridge more anxious to be mistaken for a third-year man
than I was anxious to become an old chum, as the colonial dialect calls
a settler - thereby proving my new chumship most satisfactorily. Early
next morning the birds began to sing beautifully, and the day being thus
heralded, I got up, lit the fire, and set the pannikins to boil: we
then had breakfast, and broke camp. The scenery soon became most
glorious, for, turning round a corner of the river, we saw a very fine
mountain right in front of us. I could at once see that there was a
neve near the top of it, and was all excitement. We were very anxious
to know if this was the backbone range of the island, and were hopeful
that if it was we might find some pass to the other side. The ranges on
either hand were, as I said before, covered with bush, and these, with
the rugged Alps in front of us, made a magnificent view. We went on,
and soon there came out a much grander mountain - a glorious glaciered
fellow - and then came more, and the mountains closed in, and the river
dwindled and began leaping from stone to stone, and we were shortly in
scenery of the true Alpine nature - very, very grand. It wanted,
however, a chalet or two, or some sign of human handiwork in the fore-
ground; as it was, the scene was too savage.
All the time we kept looking for gold, not in a scientific manner, but
we had a kind of idea that if we looked in the shingly beds of the
numerous tributaries to the Harpur, we should surely find either gold or
copper or something good.
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