Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/178

128 were in Otago, where rabbits are the monarchs of all they survey.

The Mackenzie country hands had told us that we should find the gorge a little rough, so we knew we were in for it presently; yet for a couple of miles we found the river good going, though some ominous spurs of bed rock now and then entering the current—the first bed rock we had met with since leaving Mount Cook—foretold what we were coming to.

After going round a few ugly corners the white water became more frequent, until suddenly we were brought up by an awkward rapid into which we dared not venture.

A survey from the cliffs, sixty feet above the stream, disclosed a tongue or groyn of rocks running out into the stream in an oblique direction from the Otago side, and shooting the main body of the current on to the rocks opposite. A long stretch of straight water followed, but the whole stream was confined in rocky banks so close together that one might throw a biscuit across, and the pace of the current was something terrific. For half an hour we considered the situation, finally determining to shoot the rapid. There was really only about eight or ten feet of safe water close to the point of the groyn of rocks, and this was right in the body of the current. On either hand were eddies and whirlpools of the most formidable character, which, in the event of our making a bad shot, might swirl us among the rocks on one side or the other, and had such been the case we trembled to think what would have been our fate. However, at it we went, Dixon as usual leading, with a head as cool as a