Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/328

 CHAPTER XIV

, proud as it may well be of its world-lauded mountains, is scarcely prouder of them than is New Zealand of its Southern Alps. For though the world at large has not as yet done so, the Dominion has discovered to its own satisfaction, that its Alps compare worthily with the Alps of Switzerland both in variety and scenic splendor.

But though Maoriland challenges the physical superiority of the Swiss Alps, it unreservedly admits their supremacy as money-making attractions. The Swiss Alps are a mighty source of revenue; the New Zealand Alps are as yet mainly a source of scenery. No hundred thousand tourists annually jab New Zealand's Alps with alpenstocks, as in the Central Alps of Europe. Here, where the first mountaineers were Maoris, no numerous grim tales of tragedy make one shudder, no hundred bleeding corpses annually stain the snows. Here is a mighty field for exploration, a great white solitude with deep silences still unbroken by footfall of man.

Yet time is bringing a change. The stillness is now more often broken, the human tread more frequently is heard. To this argent world, where the eye glimpses