CHAPTER VII.
THE ROB ROY.
Drinking fresh odours, spicy wafts that blew,
We watched the glassy, quivering air asleep,
Midway between tall cliffs that taller grew
Above the unseen torrent calling deep!
Till, like a sword, cleaving the foliage through,
The waterfall flashed foaming down the steep,
White, living water, cooling with its spray
Dense plumes of fragile fern. . . . . .
Two days later we made an expedition to find the Rob Roy glacier. Our way led us through the “Gate of Death,” past the Lone Shieling, and up the western Matukituki. It was but a poor sort of a path, among débris and boulders rolled down by the torrents that came from the mountains on our left. The river-bed was inaccessible, the water swirling along between jagged rocks; but a few miles up it widened out into several streams, and we got across safely. We were now at the opening of a gorge, that looked as if the mountains had been cleft by some terrific force: on one side they rose black and precipitous, with trees clinging wherever they could find a little soil; but generally they were sheer walls of rock. On our side the mountains were clothed to within a few hundred feet of the top with dense bush, out of which their summits rose in sharp, slatey
