Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/311

Rh and Palisades of Mount Kimberley. The Lion is the finest example in New Zealand mountains of a fancied resemblance to a lion. It has a head of sterile granite, its shoulders are perpendicular cliffs with a maximum height of three thousand feet, and its back is dark with trees. On this same shore are Stirling and Bowen Falls, chief of the many waterfalls always to be seen on the sound. Stirling Fall, five miles from Bowen Fall, has a straight drop of five hundred feet over the Palisades. Bowen Fall is one of the most unusual cataracts in the country; in striking a ledge in its descent from the Darran Range, it forms a parabola that to me looked like the playing of a great hydraulic hose. As seen from the sound the point of contact resembled the bowl of a spoon. From the deeply worn ledge the fall shot upward about fifty feet and outward much farther. From the apex of the parabola the height of the fall is five hundred and forty feet. The amount of water that pours into Milford Sound is astonishing. In Freshwater Basin, during heavy rains, the sound's brine is displaced by fresh water for a considerable depth. The same phenomenon has been observed in the sounds south of Milford. In Daggs Sound fresh water to a depth of several feet has been found a cable length from shore after a heavy rain. Another amazing fact about Milford is its reflective powers. In calm and brilliant weather mountains are outlined in its waters almost as clearly as they appear above the surface. It is as if one were looking into a slightly defective mirror.