Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/116

78 viz., by a shepherd of Mr. Burnett's from a peak of the Liebig range.

There was therefore little or no doubt that we had a virgin field before us, and it was with feelings of intense eagerness that we pressed forward across the moraine-covered part of the Tasman Glacier, and up the shingle flats of the river-bed beyond, towards that massive, moraine-covered terminal face which fills the valley from side to side, five miles from the eastern lateral face of the Tasman Glacier.

The valley appeared to be a little over one mile in width. On either hand rose up most beautifully grassed slopes thickly covered with every variety of sub-Alpine foliage decked in the gayest height of blossom.

What a place for an artist's holiday! Flowers innumerable dotted amongst the richest shades of green—lilies, celmisias in great variety, Spaniards of many kinds with their golden and spiky heads of various shapes and sizes, from the orange-coloured dwarf to the great blue Spaniard with stalks occasionally ten feet in height; snow-grass with its graceful seed-stalks gently waving in the morning zephyr, which seemed to fan all Nature into a soft and dreamy repose—such wealth of colour, such variety of form, such grandeur of outline in the looming peaks above!

Yes; here the artist might fairly lose himself in delight amongst the subjects for his brush whilst drinking in the pure sympathy with Nature which seems to float in the very air.

It is no dream, this lovely valley, though it seems as one. But its flowers go with the warm geniality of summer, and when the cold winter comes round it dons