190 



TUTIRA 



the choice is quickly relegated to the lines which have most rapidly 

 consolidated. In the vicinity of bogs, on the other hand, line after line 

 is discarded as it becomes poached into a quagmire, dozens of tracks 

 converging right and left. 



The origins of the curves and windings of the original pack- trails of 

 Tutira are known now to very few, some indeed only to myself, the sur- 

 viving prehistoric packman of the 

 station. I recollect the main obstacles 

 just as some hind must, ages ago, 

 have marked the trivial difficulties 

 that account for the meanderings of 

 an English footpath betwixt village and village. These, however, if 

 consciously noted at all, have never been told. On Tutira such trails 

 have been watched with interest from the beginning ; their origins are 

 now immortalised in ink. Where this sharp salient survives, flourished 

 at one time three great tutu shrubs, whose projecting branches inter- 

 fered with the pack-team's loads. I remember a fellow-packman 



felling them furious at the delay caused. This 

 bend on the trail avoided a grove of manuka. 

 I remember it tall and green. At this pro- 

 nounced curve once lay the carcase of a horse, 

 left where the poor beast had been dropped by 

 natives on some hunting expedition. I have sniffed the reek of the 

 beast, and recollect how the team day after day shied off to windward. 

 This elbow marked the spot where at one time lay an immense 

 totara log, afterwards sawn into strainers. The causes of the curves 

 disappear, the stumps and roots of the offending tutu trees decay 

 against which thirty years ago the loads of our pack-team used to 



strike. Fire passes through the manuka grove, 

 its scorched poles fall to the ground ; the 

 stench of the dead horse passes away, its 

 bones are scattered far and wide by pig ; the 

 great totara bole stiffens a fencing-line or supports a gate, yet still the 

 curves themselves remain. ' 



The lesser sinuosities of a pack-trail can only be generally ac- 

 counted for. They result from a host of temporary insignificant local 

 difficulties little hollows and dips, dead brushwood cumbering the 

 ground, projecting vegetation, loose spars of surface timber, spongy land, 



