Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/123

Rh The sunny afternoon was very peaceful. Nothing more startling than a cow-bell broke the silence; an occasional change of horses was quite an exciting event, especially when the leaders refused to be ‘hitched up,’ and we began to think, as we nodded on the box, that, like the Vicar of Wakefield, we were living in a state of great comfort, and had neither revolutions to fear, nor fatigue to undergo.

“We were now fairly among the mountains, the road as it wound among the foothills seeming to be blocked up at every turn by the heights that appeared to crowd together for the purpose of gazing at us over one another’s shoulders. Late in the afternoon we opened on a broad sunny valley, and saw on a distant hillside an assemblage of rocks, some grouped like the buildings of a Cyclopoean city deserted by its founders, some standing alone, stern and grim like sentries petrified at their posts; others again looking like the tombs of a colossal graveyard, or the circling seats of a vast amphitheatre; and further still huge groups and solitary masses like the gigantic monoliths of Stonehenge. A wonderful spectacle, overspread as it was with mellow liquid lights, that flooded the hill-tops, lingered lovingly about the savage crags, and even trickled over into their sombre shadows.

“It has grown very cold, and the nipping eager air bites shrewdly.

At the time of Mr Clarke’s visit, the Cass Hotel was the resting place for the night. Now the first day’s journey ends at the Bealey, where there is a comfortable hotel, by the name of the “Glacier Hotel,” kept by Mr James O’Malley. Proceeding from the Cass, Mr Clarke continues:—“After a hearty breakfast we were once again climbing hills, and bumping and crunching across river beds. We rejoiced in our special good fortune in respect of good weather; hundreds of prostrate trees and the scarred hillsides bear impress to the awful rage of the storms which sweep here all the winter long. The track is indicated sometimes by fallen trunks, and sometimes is half obliterated by the ravages of tempests. Now it winds through desolate marshes or wide belts of shingle, cleft here and there by rushing streams which, in wintry storms, or when the melting snow pours from the mountains, join in one mighty roaring torrent that overleaps its banks and sweeps rocks and trees in hideous confusion along its devastating course. After sundry ups and downs we entered the justly famous gorge of ‘The Otira’ (white waters). I cannot pretend to describe in detail this glorious region. It lives in my memory as a succession of forests, mountains, lakes, and waterfalls, as brilliant and fascinating as the most vivid fancy could depict, or the most exacting eye desire.

“There were bold hills covered with luxuriant foliage, the rich trees waving in the transparent air, backed by the white summits of still loftier ranges, upon whose surfaces, delicate and lovely, now monstrous or grotesque, the changeful light wrought itself in a magical variety of contrasted colours. Deep solitary ravines walled in by precipitous cliffs devoid of verdure, and overhanging the dark swift streams that swirl about their