Westport is the centre of the coal-mining industry--a small and dreary town of wooden houses and straight streets, at the head of a desolate plain backed by low forest-hills. It has a harbour at the mouth of the Buller, and here I watched trucks being unloaded into the hold of a small steamer. It was a most scientific unlading--the crane hoisted up the loaded truck and kept it suspended over the hold, then the bottom of the truck opened, and all the coal came tumbling out exactly as it was wanted.
After one night at Westport, a motor coach took me back through the Buller Gorge and on up the Buller Valley, until twenty-seven miles from Westport it left me at a small hotel; here I had lunch, and afterwards went on again in a coach drawn by four sleek and well-groomed horses. All that afternoon we drove by the side of the Buller River, and all the time the scenery was fine--high cliffs and dense forests, and sometimes through a break in the cliffs we saw a high distant mountain peak, white with freshly fallen snow. The river-bed has been very rich in gold, and some is still found, though the claims are now not worked very energetically; one sluicing hose, that should have been at work tearing down the rock, was aimlessly pouring water with great force back into the river.
It was the end of May and cold--as the driver sympathetically remarked "too late in the season for the Buller." I was very glad to see the first twenty miles, but after that, I wearied of forest and cliff; there was too much scenery endlessly repeated, and I was too cold to enjoy it.
The last few miles we drove in the dark, and finally came to a little township in an open valley, and here stayed for the night.
This valley and the hills surrounding it are all being cleared for grazing land, and up to the very tops of the hills are blackened tree-trunks, while grass is springing up everywhere round the half-burnt stumps.
For another ten miles beyond the little settlement the road still follows the course of the Buller, which is now a narrow mountain stream of dark green water, hurrying along between high wooded banks, until at last--and I rejoiced in the change--it branches off, and up another valley and over a low saddle to Glenhope, another small settlement, where we again reach a railway and are able to proceed by train to Nelson.