ahead of us. We had a sort of afternoon-tea-luncheon at one of the coach-stables, provided by the groom’s wife, but as the breakfast at Lurnsden had been far from delectable we were frightfully hungry long before we got to the Accommodation House on the lake.
The ugliness of the drive lasted until we got within measurable distance of the snow-capped mountains that had been part of the horizon all day. We had been gradually ascending for the last few miles when suddenly we looked down upon a range of lovely, cloudy-blue hills, some cone-shaped, some with rounded tops, some bunchy, and as we slowly lessened the distance they changed their colour from blue to a vivid green, and we saw that they were covered with bush, like those above the Buller Gorge.
We could not see the lake until we were almost upon it, and as the sky, in spite of the heat, was cloudy, its waters were grey instead of blue. Nevertheless was it beautiful, surrounded by the multiform green hills, and with many green islands lying on its shimmering silvery bosom.
It looked perfectly exquisite from the grounds of the Accommodation House a little later in the afternoon, when the soft blue and violet lights of the Southern twilight were on the hills, and we braved the sandflies and went down to the beach directly after our “high-tea,” a meal that Colonel Deane said we had better try to get accustomed to, for dinners in this part of the world were always at the sane but uninspiring hour of noon!
We set off very early next morning in a launch, and had a perfect day, cruising among the mazy ways of Manapouri. One island on the lake is a hill with quite a good-sized lake on its summit. There are hundreds of islands, all wooded, and the rata was all out and very brilliantly scarlet, the only touch of colour, besides the sky and water, among all that green.
Warbrick was down there, and on our return we went to see what progress he was making in opening up the channel between the two lakes, Manapouri and Te Anau. But the channel was not yet navigable, and so we had to drive to Te Anau.
The coach left Manapouri at five in the afternoon, with a rather angry sky overhead, and packed with gloom in the shape of five ladies who were unable to obtain box seats. The three next the driver were occupied by an English Major and his wife and daughter, and we had thankfully accepted the very much higher ones at the back of the coach. It was evident that they were all going to Milford, and we viewed them, therefore, with much interest. The five inside were all of one party, an elderly chaperone, her two daughters, and two other youngish ladies. Only one man—and seven ladies,—for we did not include our own party as we meant to avoid the others most scrupulously. And we wondered what the solitary specimen of the stronger sex would do if the entire seven chose to faint at a crucial moment on the top of the pass?
The drive was a very pleasant one, the hills taking unto themselves even more curious shapes in the half-light than they did by day. We had heard some
