Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/281

Rh the Fiordland National Park is indented by fourteen sounds from six to twenty-two miles long. The chief of these, from a scenic viewpoint, is Milford, ten miles in length and running between the handsomely proportioned Lion Rock and the bold, spiring Mitre Peak, which forms one of the world's most striking mountain pictures. Only eight of these sounds are usually visited, the others not being especially attractive. South of Milford the popular fiords are George, Thompson, Doubtful, Breaksea, and Dusky Sounds, and Chalky and Preservation Inlets.

All these sounds fill deep hollows excavated by glaciers, and so sheer are their walls that in many places vessels can anchor to trees at the water's edge. In them the depth of water is greater than at any other part of the New Zealand coast, Milford Sound, for example, having a maximum depth of 1270 feet. As yachting and camping grounds. New Zealand's fiords, with their densely forested shores, rising from 1000 to 6000 feet high, and their sylvan isles, are unsurpassed by similar retreats in either hemisphere.

Beautiful New Zealand is not all beautiful, even in the South Island, its most beautiful part, so many of its scenic wonders lie beyond dreary tussock plains and hills. Across such lonely grass expanses I went to reach the Cold Lakes, the sounds, and the Southern Alps. My ways to all these wonders and to the coast of gold and greenstone beyond were over hills of glacial deposits, through valleys of alluvial drift, within sight of crumbling