On reaching an isolated cabbage tree one deliberately lay down, while the other backed against the tree and stood sulkily at bay.  Being nearest, I ignorantly made at them with the whip, when I was saluted with a bellow and a sudden charge, which, had not my horse been more on guard than I was, might have maimed one or both of us.  The beast, having charged, backed again to the tree, and stood with nozzle touching the ground, breathing heavily, with sunken flanks and half-glazed eyes, a picture of imbecility, recklessness, and fatigue.

Hudson, on coming up, saw it was useless to attempt driving him further, and so we left him and the cabbage tree, and resumed our course with one bullock, which we actually did succeed in getting to the stockyard as night was falling.

Here, unfortunately, we found the yards closed and no one by to open them, and whilst I dismounted to take down the rails, the infernal beast once more bolted, apparently as fresh as ever, and notwithstanding all our endeavours to overhaul him darkness and our jaded horses failed us, and we had no resource but to wend our weary way to the homestead, three miles up the river, disappointed, dead beat, and hungry.

We were most hospitably received by Mr. and Mrs. Ben Moorhouse, with whom for genuine kindness and hospitality few could compare, and they invited us to stay with them a day or two, which we gladly agreed to do.  It was a real treat to pass any time in such a lovely locality and with such friends.  The homestead was built on the river bed flat, a natural park covered with shrubbery palms, pines, and forest trees, along which on one side the turbulent Rangitata rushed in a confusion of waterfalls, whirlpools, and cascades, amidst huge masses of rock, and beyond which rose precipitous hills with their lower portions clothed in richest vegetation.  The views up the gorge from this point were enchanting, but I will take another opportunity of describing some of the mountain scenery of the Southern Alps, the grandest in its own peculiar form of any in the world.

Mr. Ben Moorhouse was one of three brothers, two of whom were squatters, and the eldest superintendent of the Province of Canterbury.  They had all been some years in Australia, and were exceedingly fine men over six feet in height and built in proportion, good shots and experts at most games of strength and skill, not amongst the least of which was the science of boxing.  We were treated the morning after our arrival to a lesson with the gloves, subsequently often repeated, and following this we had turns each in trying to ride a very clever buckjumper, a late purchase.