Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/363

Rh into tussock hills, and high above the Waimakiriri River via the daylight-to-dark railway, which had sixteen tunnels in less than seven miles. Near the terminus of this road, Cass, the yellow dullness of the tussock met the dark-green beauty of the mountain bush. At Cass the Otira coach road began. For several miles it followed the Waimakiriri Valley, which was flanked with forested mountains from four thousand to six thousand feet high, topped and streaked with slate-colored shingle. As is usual with streams of this character, the Waimakiriri claimed the whole of the valley's wide flat as its own, and having swept away all surface soil, it exposed broad areas of cobblestones and gravel which its waters never laved excepting in times of flood. Just beyond Bealey the Waimakiriri was forded; thereafter to Arthur's Pass, which overlooks the gorge at a height of three thousand feet, the road passed through the Bealey River Valley, bush clad and pretty, and in view of the tunnel then being bored for New Zealand's first trans-Alpine railroad.

The top of Arthur's Pass was not in itself a captivating vantage-point from which to view the Otira's charms, since it was overgrown with flax and tussock and strewn with boulders; but satisfying was its prospect. On its west was Mount Rolleston and its glacier; to the east were other high mountains; to the north, winding between barren-topped ranges, was the gorge. Shortly below the pass, on the north, the hardy flax intermingled with flowering shrubs, forming a tangle discouraging to