From The Top Of The
Terrace I Had Surveyed It Carefully As It Lay Beneath, Wandering
Capriciously In The Wasteful Shingle-Bed, And Looking Like A Maze Of
Tangled Silver Ribbons.
I calculated how to cut off one stream after
another, but I could not shirk the main stream, dodge
It how I might;
and when on the level of the river, I lost all my landmarks in the
labyrinth of streams, and determined to cross each just above the first
rapid I came to. The river was very milky, and the stones at the bottom
could not be seen, except just at the edges: I do not know how I got
over. I remember going in, and thinking that the horse was lifting his
legs up and putting them down in the same place again, and that the
river was flowing backwards. In fact I grew dizzy directly, but by
fixing my eyes on the opposite bank, and leaving Doctor to manage
matters as he chose, somehow or other, and much to my relief, I got to
the other side. It was really nothing at all. I was wet only a little
above the ankle; but it is the rapidity of the stream which makes it so
unpleasant - in fact, so positively hard to those who are not used to it.
On their few first experiences of one of these New Zealand rivers,
people dislike them extremely; they then become very callous to them,
and are as unreasonably foolhardy as they were before timorous; then
they generally get an escape from drowning or two, or else they get
drowned in earnest. After one or two escapes their original respect for
the rivers returns, and for ever after they learn not to play any
unnecessary tricks with them. Not a year passes but what each of them
sends one or more to his grave; yet as long as they are at their
ordinary level, and crossed with due care, there is no real danger in
them whatever. I have crossed and recrossed the Waimakiriri so often in
my late trip that I have ceased to be much afraid of it unless it is
high, and then I assure you that I am far too nervous to attempt it.
When I crossed it first I was assured that it was not high, but only a
little full.
The Waimakiriri flows from the back country out into the plains through
a very beautiful narrow gorge. The channel winds between wooded rocks,
beneath which the river whirls and frets and eddies most gloriously.
Above the lower cliffs, which descend perpendicularly into the river,
rise lofty mountains to an elevation of several thousand feet: so that
the scenery here is truly fine. In the river-bed, near the gorge, there
is a good deal of lignite, and, near the Kowai, a little tributary which
comes in a few miles below the gorge, there is an extensive bed of true
and valuable coal.
The back country of the Waimakiriri is inaccessible by dray, so that all
the stores and all the wool have to be packed in and packed out on
horseback.
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