Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/302

194 only lake worthy of the name, it was not, from the top of the pass, so suggestive nor so creative of curiosity as the sweeping canyon lines of the Clinton. In the last curves visible from the pass looking down the Clinton there was a suggestion of something interesting beyond, just as there is in the bend of any beautiful river. Away below was Lake Mintaro, a pond receiving the waters of glacial streams; the dark mass of forest; and, as also in Arthur Canyon, areas of grasses and bushes that, at that distance, gave the canyon floor the appearance of green meadows. At times fog overlaid the canyon until it looked like one great river of mist. The flowers on the pass and its slopes are common in high altitudes throughout this region, and are found in profusion in the Southern Alps. Most beautiful of them all was the Ranunculus Lyalli, a buttercup misnamed the Mountain Lily and known also as the Mount Cook Lily and the Shepherd's Lily. With its broad leaves, sometimes exceeding fifteen inches in width, it looked to me like a water-lily stranded on land. Its pure white waxy blossom, centred with yellow, is the most pleasing floral object in New Zealand's alpine regions. Another very common flower on the pass was the celmisia, a daisy from two to three inches in diameter. In New Zealand there are about forty species of this flower, and all but one are endemic. On the pass, a short distance to the left of the track as one goes toward the sound, is a track-walkers' memorial to Quintin McKinnon, who, after several