Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/297

Rh indented ferns, and there were ferns that climbed trees and crowned moss-covered rocks. Completely covering other rocks beside the track were gray lichens that at a distance resembled masses of coral, and on trunks and limbs of trees light-green lichens hung in streamers and tufts. Throughout the forest mosses formed carpets and cushions and on canyon slopes were acres of brown and green moss saturated by seepage and stream. Where the forest was most luxuriant it veiled the sternness of the canyon's granite piles to the snow-line, but above that were only shrubs and snow grass to the point where there appeared to be nothing but ice and snow and dripping granite ledges. These ramparts were streaked white with what apparently was powdered débris; and where they could find a resting-place there were huge frozen snowbanks, through which torrents bored large caves and long dark tunnels that were as cool as refrigerators.

After I had been ferried across the Clinton, the walk fairly began. All the way to McKinnon's Pass the track closely followed this stream, which lies in a canyon from one fourth to a half-mile wide. The granite walls are from three thousand to four thousand feet high, and they run upward into mountains with crests from five thousand to seven thousand feet above the sea. Excepting during floods, the Clinton is a clear, placid stream for a considerable distance from its mouth, and for miles flows through a beech forest that reaches across the