VII 
AN UNSAFE TRACK 
233 
Anne Page ” looked down from above on us with a 
smoke-dried face, and the wall beside this was decorated 
with four horseshoes, covered with black velveteen and 
pink ribbons ! We were all very hungry, and made a 
substantial meal off roast mutton, eggs, scones, bread 
and jam ; then up the tiny staircase with small 
passages and innumerable rooms everywhere, and to 
bed. Everything was very clean and everyone most 
obliging. 
How cold it was next morning as I dressed by 
candlelight, and how inhuman of the coach arrange- 
ments to start us at six ! We drove along through a 
thick mist silently for two hours, and then, through a 
near break in the trees, saw the Buller River running 
hundreds of feet below ; and the notices on the rickety 
wooden bridges, “ This bridge is unsafe for traffic,” just 
reminded us of previous warnings, but before one’s wits 
had had time to gather themselves together to be 
frightened, with a dash we were over. An unpleasantly 
sharp turn of the road showed us where last year the 
outside edge gave way, and the coach fell 200 feet 
down the cliff. The proprietor’s wife was killed and 
two passengers injured for life. The river was not 
very high or they might have been swept down, but 
they fell on a small sandbank, which saved them. 
What a land of loveliness it was ! Such magnificent 
birch trees, and such ferns ! Hundreds of feet below, 
the Buller, with its bluish-green water, deep, wide, and 
swift, rushed, sometimes between sandy banks, then 
forced an entrance through giant rocks. The road 
wound round and round each headland, and we went 
spinning along the narrow track with the high wooded 
cliffs above and the ever-changing scene in front. We 
passed a dredge at work — one that in the last floods 
was turned over and its two occupants swept away 
