A Long-Distance Tryst.

Our pioneer settlers, in the spacious days of the past, thought little of long horseback journeys. In that era, long before railways and motor-cars had made transit easy and luxurious, the horse was the only long-distance time-saver for the New Zealander; and they raised good horses in those days. Some of us have covered a few thousands of miles on horseback in our time, but the growing-up generation knows little of the saddle. (Perhaps our new Governor-General, Lord Galway, a famous lover of good horses and the hunt, will do something to stimulate a healthy return to horsemanship in the Dominion.)

A veteran of the pioneering years in the Upper Waikato, a friend of mine, cast back in his memory the other day and recalled some incidents of the ‘Seventies.

“There were two brothers,” he said, “who had come from the Tamaki, near Auckland, and who had undertaken ploughing contracts on the Roto-o rangi estate, on the old Frontier line, before they settled on their own farms, which had to be broken in from a wild state. The elder brother was courting his Kate at the Tamaki but it was a long way to go, quite a hundred miles. Yet he did it frequently, riding the hundred miles on the Saturday and returning to the station by Monday. He'd leave very early in the morning, ride the tracks and cross the unbridged streams—there was only a punt on the Waikato River at Ngaruawahia, and the other rivers had none—travel the Great South Road, and reach the Tamaki at night, do his courting, and off again next day.”

There was a quick-travelling lover for you; but the hardy lads of those Waikato days did not regard it as anything out of the way. They bred splendid horses then, hacks that could carry a man's weight and last the long day at a steady tireless gait. Good riders, too, who could nurse a horse along.

The other brother, also, used to make week-end trips to the Tamaki to see his parents. On one occasion he rode down there from Roto-o-rangi on the Saturday. On the following evening the men at the frontier station were astonished to see his horse, without rider or saddle or bridle, come trotting up and put his head over the gate. He had got out of the paddock at the Tamaki farm, apparently not finding the company or the feed to his taste, and made a quick journey home. Two hundred miles in two days may seem a knock-out journey for horseflesh, yet they could do it in those times. He must have swum the Waikato River at Ngaruawahia on his return journey; the puntman would scarcely be likely to give a stray horse a free passage.

At the Wellington Police Court the other day while a witness was under examination, counsel suddenly hurried across to the “box” and told him he was “on fire!” Smoke was actually issuing from the man's coat pocket although he was blissfully ignorant of the fact. When he hastily pulled out his pipe it was half-full of burning tobacco. It appeared that he had removed the pipe from his mouth when he entered the Court, thrust it into his pocket, and forgotten all about it. Smokers are often very careless in that way—and in another way. They'll go on smoking tobacco reeking with nicotine and never realise their danger until their health gives way. Nicotine, it cannot too often be insisted, is poisonous stuff and brands rich in it should be rigorously avoided. The safe and sure way is to smoke the genuine “toasted.” The five brands of the real thing—Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Cavendish, Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold are unapproached for quality, and being toasted are perfectly harmless.*