e, a vast
expanse of shingle, full of treacherous quicksands, in which the course
of the different streams is altered after every fresh. One might
approach the Rakaia to-day and find it consist of three or four streams
from twenty to one hundred yards wide, and not exceeding one to two feet
in depth; to-morrow it might be a roaring sea a quarter of a mile in
width, racing at a speed of five to ten miles an hour.

At the crossing of this river, accommodation houses were established at
each side, both establishments providing expert men and horses who were
constantly employed seeking for fords and conducting travellers across.

Nowadays, doubtless fine bridges, railways, and smart hotels have taken
the place of what I am endeavouring to describe as the condition of
things fifty years ago. The Rakaia is fifty miles from Christchurch, and
that was our first day's ride. The accommodation house on the north side
was a weird-looking habitation, a long, low, single-storeyed
desolate-looking building, partly constructed of mud and partly of green
timber slabs rough from the forest, but it was, even so, a welcome sight
after our long monotonous ride.

The house consisted of a small sitting-room or parlour for the better
class of guests, not uncomfortably furnished, and about twelve feet
square, two small bedrooms, a kitchen and a bar, the former serving for
cooking purposes as well as a sitting and a bed-room for those
travellers who could not afford the luxury or were not entitled to the
dignity of the parlour. Separated a little way from this tenement was a
long low shed used as a stable for such animals as their owners could
afford to pay for so much comfort and a feed, in preference to the usual
tussock and twenty yards of tether on the well-cropped ground around the
hostelry.

It was a rough place, and a rough lot of characters were not
unfrequently seen there. The Jack Tar just arrived from the bush or some
up-country station with a cheque for a year's wages, bent on a spree,
and standing drinks all round while his money lasted, the Scottish
shepherd plying liquor and grasping hands for "Auld Lang Syne," the
wretched debauched crawler, the villainous-looking "lag" from "t'other
side," the bullock puncher, whose every alternate word was a profane
oath, the stockrider, in his guernsey shirt and knee boots with
stockwhip thrown over his shoulder, engaging the attention of those who
would listen with some miraculous story o