Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/365

Rh Reefton caters to the tourists coaching through the Buller Gorge.

From Lake Rotoiti, which is practically its source, to within a few miles of the important coal-exporting town of Westport, the Buller River courses between mountains from three thousand to nearly five thousand feet high. For thirty-three miles from the lake it has an average fall of forty-four feet per mile, and it has so many rapids and shallows that it probably never will be made navigable. Near its junction with the Inangahua River the Buller's attractiveness, when I saw it, had been lessened by clearings; but the loss of forest was partly compensated for by tree-adorned sandstone cliffs. In places this formation, purple-stained and draped with foliage, rose hundreds of feet near the river; at other points it formed the walls of distant mountains. Two miles below the Inangahua Junction the river made one of its large bends and left the road well inland. For about four miles it was hidden by a wide, swampy flat; next it appeared in beautiful form at the base of vertical wood bluffs. Here as elsewhere along the Buller, excepting where it had been destroyed, a mixed bush climbed to the tops of the mountains. Above the Junction the gorge's beauty had been despoiled for long distances by clearings; but there still were many fine scenes, notably near Lyell. To the traveler northward-bound, this dilapidated mining town is the portal to what many persons enthusiastically