Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/75

Rh there is a valley shut in by mountains which leads to a rather formidable river, named after our family, the "Harper" river, a torrent which has a short run from some secondary glaciers, and joins the Rakaia. Its riverbed is wide, and in flood time the force of the current is such that it cannot be safely forded. As yet I have not found it higher than the stirrups, but even then, if one is broadside on to the rushing water, it will rise right up to the saddle, and, like all these mountain torrents, it is icy cold. On the further side, in a lovely situation, Major Scott has planted his house, and lives there with his family and employées. The house nestles under a forest of Mountain Birch, so-called, but really a beech, with very small leaves, and the only decidous native tree in New Zealand, though, as the young leaf comes on whilst the old leaves are dropping, it seems to be an evergreen. For a mountain run there is a fair amount of grass, and plenty of shelter for sheep in the broken country, which is set in an amphitheatre of snowy peaks, bounded westward by ranges never yet crossed. It can be no great distance to the West Coast, but explorers report a mass of impenetrable forest on the western side of the ranges, extending hundreds of miles, and I doubt if such a wilderness will ever be colonized except through the discovery of gold. In future years, as elsewhere, the "auri sacra fames" may tempt men to venture, and so fulfil its appointed task of opening up an inhospitable waste to settlement and cultivation. All that is now known of the West Coast, save from the reports of passing vessels, of which Captain Cook's was one long ago, is due to my brother Leonard. Some little time ago, with a few Maoris and one Englishman, who was unable to