Nature's Roll-Down.

Speaking of projecting eats through the ether, dear reader, has it ever occurred to you what a fertile field is offered for such culinary capers, by the Rimutakas? Imagine for a moment a dropsical melon released from captivity and precipitated down the precipices, racing down the rocky ravines, leaping from ledge to ledge with lachrymose laughter, squelching squashily, vaulting voluptuously, sobbing sibilantly, and

“Auto-Suggestion.”

page 16 uttering little gurgles of gladness as it flies back to the bosom of Nature. Ah me! Is there not something melting about a melon? But let us not be melon-choly.

Slip in among the egg crates with a gamp.”

Truly, such visions of verticality as the Rimutakas offer, cause the cerebrum to surge with alpinistic agitation as the train pants and labours heroically up the noble incline from Cross Creek to Summit. Recently an attenuated traveller visioned the vertical view from a carriage platform with evident disbelief, like the United States man who turned his back on the riots of Rotorua with the words: “I don't believe it.” But there was some excuse for the wayfarer on the Rimutakas, for the train had been deflected from the Manawatu to the Wairarapa on account of a slip in the Manawatu Gorge, and without notice or warning he found himself standing on one ear, as it were.

“Goo’ gor; where am I?” he whispered, like someone regaining consciousness after having been struck smartly on the occiput with a cookery-class scone.

The four gallant engines panted and pulled like iron Clydesdales; the cogs muttered grimly as they gripped and chewed the centre rail; fearsome depths and breath-taking examples of Nature's adolescent fury crept past. To the traveller prepared for such stark ruggedness and naked beauty the Rimutakas are palpitatious, but to have them suddenly served on one without the usual seven days notice is enough to make one cry “Good gor!”

“I'm catchin’ the boat home to th' ole Dart t'morrer, but glad I didn't miss this,” offered the excited excursionist, and somewhere on the ocean's bosom there floats another unpaid booster of these rugged and overpowering isles. Etched on his brain is a picture of sheer fingers of naked rock groping among the mists, white ribbons of water in the gloom of the gullies, huge patches of Pohutukawa bloom splashing the mountain like blood oozing from the side of a wounded but unvanquished giant; and of a great dry watercourse—a glacier of shingle—like a half-healed sword slash in the mountain's side—“Goo' gor, ain't man minute!”

There are a million advantages in travelling by train in New Zealand and two of them are that the traveller can always be sure of splendid mountain and a wonderful gorge on the Railway.