Page:Through South Westland.djvu/97

CHAPTER IV.

THE WAIHO GORGE AND A HATTER.

The spear-grass crackles under the billy, and overhead is the winter’s sun;

There’s snow on the hills, there’s frost in the gully, that minds me of things that I’ve seen and done,

Of blokes that I knew, and mates that I’ve worked with, and the sprees we had in the days gone by;

And a mist comes up from my heart to my eyelids; I feel fair sick, and I wonder why.

David McKeb Wright.

The harbour-master and I continued our way to a straggling little settlement at the foot of precipitous bush-clad hills, the outliers of the high ranges behind. Deep gorges with foaming torrents cleft them in all directions, and we drove across a flat where the road winds amid scrub and stones and yellow grasses, with the Waiho river eddying among its boulders on the right hand. As one proceeds, one of the finest, and perhaps one of the strangest, views in the world unfolds; for where else can we hope to find a combination of colour like this? The dark mountains rising purple to the snow, peak beyond peak of the Southern Alps soaring white against that wondrous blue—so close they seem, so attainable—it is hard to realize they are 10,000 feet above us. And between two mountain walls, filling a mighty gorge, winds down the Franz Josef glacier; an icy chaos of pinnacles and seracs, green-blue and glittering white against