Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/173

Rh I made sure my hair would be grey, like poor Bonnivard's, before this lake was crossed; but soon the wind dropped, and we paddled ashore at 9 close to the hotel and called for brandy and water hot, and seldom was the indulgence more justified.

At Pukaki Ferry we enjoyed a well-earned night's rest, and on Sunday morning we effected repairs to the leaky canoes, in which operation we received much valuable advice and assistance from Mr. John Gibb, artist, who was spending a few days in sketching at this point. By 1 we were on board again and looking forward to reaching Rugged Ridges—Mr. W.G. Rutherfurd's station on the southern bank of the Waitaki—before nightfall. But we little knew what was ahead of us.

A survey of the river from an eminence of the old moraine through which it has formed a channel, revealed, as far as the bends of the stream could be followed, a rushing, seething mass of foam-covered water, with numberless blocks of rock barring the clear passage of the current, and though we shot the first two rapids below the exit from the lake it took us until seven o'clock in the evening to navigate six miles of the river's course.

It is not easy to describe the wild course of the river in its descent through the enormous ancient moraine deposits, some of which might almost be classed as mountains, and must rear their tops to a height of 1,000 feet above the level of the river. Such an immense body of rushing water, receiving, as it does, the whole of the drainage of the Southern Alps, from the head of the Mueller Glacier to that of the