A woman in the Antipodes and in the Far East . ide-saddle, but I did not quite fancythe plan, and when a man called Green, who was taking awagon-load of grain in sacks to Waiouru, offered me a lift,I gladly accepted. The journey was to be performed inthree stages instead of one, with halts at two rest-houseson the way. Accordingly I set forth blithely with Green, who hadarranged a seat for me among the sacks, which would havebeen comfortable enough on an ordinary road, but alack !the road, which was bad enough (judged by ordinarystandards) at the start, became worse and worse. Theword mud in n
A woman in the Antipodes and in the Far East . ide-saddle, but I did not quite fancythe plan, and when a man called Green, who was taking awagon-load of grain in sacks to Waiouru, offered me a lift,I gladly accepted. The journey was to be performed inthree stages instead of one, with halts at two rest-houseson the way. Accordingly I set forth blithely with Green, who hadarranged a seat for me among the sacks, which would havebeen comfortable enough on an ordinary road, but alack !the road, which was bad enough (judged by ordinarystandards) at the start, became worse and worse. Theword mud in no way describes the sticky morass throughwhich we had to struggle; and where the slushy bog inplaces became less wet, the ruts became the more appalling,until the culminating catastrophe occurred. I cannot say exactly what led to it, for it all happenedin a moment. One wheel ran up a bank, and with a crashover went the wagon, and I was dumped out into the mud,along with an avalanche of heavy sacks, by some miracleescaping instantaneous ROTORUA TO WAIOURU 83 Green made a jump as he felt the cart tilting, and man-aged to spring clear of the wreckage, and I can well recallhis ashen face as he hurried to me, calling out, Are youhurt ? in tones of great alarm. I hardly knew whether I was hurt or not until he re-moved some sacks which pinned me down by the legs, andthen I found I could struggle to my feet, so it was evidentI was to get off lightly with severe bruises. Greens relief was intense. And I was starting to helphim in what seemed the hopeless task of extricating thehorses, and righting the wagon, when to our relief wesaw the others with the mail appearing over a ridge in thedistance, and when they caught sight of us, they gallopedup quickly to our assistance. When at last the damage was patched up and thewagon ready to go on, the mail men persuaded me tofinish the first stage of the journey on horseback, which,although I was in no way equipped for riding, I decidedwo
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