WESTPORT TO NELSON OVERLAND.
CHAPTER XIII.
RAVELLING from Westport to Nelson overland now-a-days is a very different thing to what it was fifteen years ago. During that time the tracks and roads, and means of conveyance have undergone marked changes. Facilities for travel are now provided which were then undreamt of. I remember the first trip made by Antonio Zala, the prospector, to the Lyell, when he discovered the famous Alpine quartz reef. Many a weary journey he and his mates had in that direction before a stamp head or a water right was heard of. Zala is undoubtedly entitled to the credit of discovering and opening up the Lyell reefs. His indomitable perseverance, under the most adverse circumstances, is well deserving of special mention amongst the prospecting pioneers of these parts. When the Lyell township was in its early infancy, and when one or two quartz reefs in that direction were making much talk in the neighbourhood of Westport and Greymouth, a special reporter from the Westport Times was despatched to report upon the richness or poverty of the land, as his fancy or belief might suggest. He scanned the Lyell, the township, the road, and the claims, minutely, and proceeded onwards to Nelson. Some uneasiness was felt for his safe arrival at the latter place, but after an absence of three weeks or so, the first of his notes, or “all that was left of them,” reached the medium through which they were published, and thus his story was narrated.
“Mr Editor,—Permit me to make a few preliminary suggestions. When you again start a special correspondent to the ‘remote interior,’ please not to start him, or to let him start, before you are perfectly assured that he is perfectly ready. In particular, be particular about his boots. See that they are neither too old nor too new. Read the Scriptures on the subject of wine and bottles—which latter were in ancient days made of leather—and be benefited thereby. A disregard for the easiness of his boots will be culpable on your part; and to him the results may be most melancholy, according to the tenderness of his epidermis, or to the extent to which, in the early agricultural periods of his life, he may have cultivated corns. Beginning with his big toe, he may, by some repulsive order of progression—for particulars of which see Darwin—develop into some hideous form of the genus Blister. To the grief of his friends, his enterprise, like others of more pith and moment, may turn awry, and he, in temper, may turn exceedingly nasty. Were it not that you might mistake it for a play upon words, and might believe that I said it not in all seriousness, I should say that, minus good boots, his mission might prove altogether bootless.
