By train and bicycle I gradually wormed my way from Canterbury’s city of the plain into the foot-hill country of the range that stretches along not far from the western edge of our South (or Middle) Island of New Zealand. Back of the lesser heights appeared the glistening peaks of the alpine country, where river beds of shingle and terraces of browning tussock and lakes of deep calm occupied the spaces between the sky-piercing points. As I struck in
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Kea country: Up the Wilberforce River; showing the darkness of the mountains east of the dividing range.
from Glentunnel, Mt. Hutt towered in front: a gaunt, mute sentinel seven thousand feet in height, with epaulettes and trappings of tussock and helmet of snow. Nothing daunted, I cycled by him deeper and deeper into the ranges by the way the Rakaia River has made for itself in its descent from the heights to the plain.
