Kumara and the present terminus of the railway between the West Coast and Canterbury. Otira is a very small settlement as yet,—three or four houses, a school, and two hotels, with the railway station. Another coach was waiting there, and a buggy, with a tribe of people who had come by train to this point. Our driver was the head-coachman of this line of coaches, and until we arrived the driver of the other coach, which belonged to the same stable, was not able to arrange any seats.
So our coming was the signal for the oddest exhibition of character. There were a good many more passengers than our driver had on his list; the list was full, and piles of luggage stood in the road waiting to be stowed away too. The people who had engaged seats were of course sure of them, but some felt anxious and began to insist on their rights before the others could claim a seat at all, others walked carelessly away, but not so far that they could not see what was happening and be at hand in case their seats were seized. And those who had not engaged any, when they saw how the land lay, became truculent, talked about bad management in a loud and angry voice, and threatened to write to the Premier unless they were given the very best seats on the coach! But the driver, a somewhat surly, silent fellow, went on packing away the baggage with the aid of his two lieutenants, and when it was all on, and not before, he spoke.
“Them as ain’t engaged seats can take what they can get or stay behind!” he said. “When I’ve fitted in them as has engaged their seats for this partic’ler drive I’ll see what I can do for the others, but it’s no good talking nor threatening me with no Premiers, for I does the best I can for everybody and there ain’t no call for the Premier nor nobody to interfere with that!”
And not another word could they get from him. The way he fitted them all in was wonderful, but we felt more than ever glad that our seats had been secured before ever we started from Auckland.
Soon after leaving the station we began to climb, and before long we were in the gorge. It is wild and rough, but not particularly impressive, for the hills are not big enough for grandeur. The road was narrow and steep, and we all walked excepting one or two ladies and the drivers. Sometimes we had to jump fairly wide streams, or cross them on stepping-stones, and the way was very dusty and stony, so that it was hard walking even with stout shoes. We had left the wealth of foliage and ferns now and there was no variety in this bush, nothing but birch, with sometimes a few willows by a stream, but we found some lovely mountain lilies of a kind we had never seen before.
Once out of the gorge the ascent of Arthur’s Pass began, the road doubling backwards and forwards, now a flat bit, then an almost precipitous stretch, until we reached the summit, when we all climbed to our seats in coaches or buggy again. And then came the descent with a run through a few miles of bush before we got to the mile-wide shingly bed of the Waimakariri River.
Since leaving Otira we had not passed any signs of human life excepting some road-menders, and one or two tiny cottages or huts occupied by the
