Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/123

 steep boskiness, caused by a landslip. Every winding turn discloses some bank or crag, some dell or ravine more exquisitely lovely than the one just passed.

The clang of the hoofs on the hard road, or the boom as we cross a culvert or bridge, echoes from cliff to cliff, and the crack of the driver's whip is multiplied, and reverberates amid the gorges and precipices on both sides of the pass.

Giant totaras, ragged with age, draped with moss and lichen, tower in masses above the lower bush, which is thickly clung with creepers innumerable. The wind howls up the pass, and lashes the pools into temporary fury. The tints, the heights and deeps, the tossing foliage, the swift stream, the mists and shadows, the fringes of ferns over the beetling cliffs, the craggy boundary before and behind, seeming to enclose us in a rocky prison, all form a scene of inexpressible beauty and indescribable grandeur.

Well may New Zealand be named wonderland, and this most glorious gorge is aptly designated one of its chiefest wonders. After miles of this majesty and sublimity, the cliffs open out like the rocky jaws of some Adamantine serpent, and the released river rolls out smilingly and open-bosomed into the undulating forest country outside the gorge.

We cross by a curious ferry. The boat is propelled by the current of the stream itself. A well-oiled traveller runs on a taut wire cable. The current catches the boat at the angle made by the