Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/301

Rh Canyon, the continuation of the path to Milford Sound. From a distance the wall looked impassable, but its summit I finally gained by a rough and rocky zigzag course. On this pass, overgrown with coarse mountain grass, dotted with pools of water, and brightened with the white and gold of the Mountain Lily and the snowy blossoms of alpine daisies, was one of the grandest of mountain panoramas. Here was a picture of encircling snow peaks, canyons and rivers, glacier and snowfield, waterfalls and mountain wreckage. Immediately to the right as I faced westward was the remarkable spire of Balloon Peak; to the left were the sheer descents of Mount Hart; more distant were the tremendous precipices of The Castle Mountain and of Mounts Pillans, Edgar, and Elliott. On Mount Elliott there was faintly discernible the blue of ice cliffs on Jervois Glacier hundreds of feet high. This snow-capped icefield had the appearance of a great mass of baking powder or flour breaking apart under its own weight and forming crevices and crumbling heaps. On one side was the curving Clinton Canyon, on the other side was the more abruptly terminating vista of Arthur Canyon. Both were magnificent beyond words, both had their eyrie cliffs and lofty waterfalls, their roaring and placid reaches of creek and river, their lake and delightful forests. But though Arthur Canyon seemed on the whole to be more wooded, more open and more cheerful, and had the finest waterfalls and the