Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/228

178 the mountain-side, we saw beneath us the great expanse of the Tasman river-bed, intersected here and there with silvery streams, which looked but a thread in the grey expanse of shingle; and rising from its right-hand bank, the Nun's Veil reared its beautiful snow-caps against the cloudless blue of the autumn sky.

We had perforce to ride at a foot's-pace, the track being rough and narrow. Infected by the perfect day, we planned expeditions enough to last a month, and scaled in imagination all the mountains hitherto undefiled by the foot of man, much less by that of mere woman. To the tune of these joyous speculations the miles slipped by unheeded, and we found ourselves crossing the half-mile of tussock plain which leads to the entrance of a narrow valley, walled on one side by the terminal Tasman Moraine and on the other by the Mount Cook Range. The path follows beside a gay little mountain stream dashing itself in cascades of silver over brown boulders, and deep blue in the shallows, the grassy left-hand bank fringed with giant Spaniards, which lifted their spiky yellow heads high above great clumps of celmisias with their stiff, silver-backed green leaves and lovely aster-like white flowers. Beside our path the stony bank was gay with all kinds of Coprosma in full berry. The blue of glacier streams seems to have hidden itself in the transparent oval berries of the acerosa variety. They are more like beads than berries, and in some places turn the grey riverbeds into a sheet of misty blue of indescribable loveliness. Beside the blue are bushes of red and orange, and a little farther on a big crop of the palest pink, these latter being opaque. After about half a mile the path leaves the stream, but comes out again at its source, a tiny fan-shaped lake of a beautiful chalky blue, strangely streaked and mottled with reddish brown; the result of a water-weed growing several inches below the surface. This tarn is the haunt of a pair of paradise ducks, which never fail to greet the intruder with protesting squeaks. Leaving the lake, the