CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAST STAGE.
The glory from the Western hills
Falls fading, spark on spark,
Only a mighty sadness fills
The spaces of the dark.
The mist floating in the valley was very tantalizing, hiding so much I longed to see. The scene was changing entirely. We were now riding up a wide river-bed of grey sands and gravel; crossing and re-crossing, but never swimming. Then the gorge opened into a wide valley, stretching away on our left, to high snow mountains, and unexplored peaks and glaciers. The Lansborough river comes down here, bringing the main body of water to the Haast, and it is said it was due to a mistake that the small river entering it on the right was named after Sir Julius Von Haast. He was the first to penetrate through these mountains from sea to sea. It is getting a long time ago now, but I don’t think the track can have changed much since the day when he and his men forced their way through!
The Lansborough takes its rise in the Southern Alps, where a net-work of glaciers feeds many small rivers, some of which find outlet towards Hunter’s river and Lake Hawea eastwards, while
