Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/129

Rh veronica. In summer time, tier upon tier of scarlet bands—a blaze of brilliant colour—relieved by a variety of shades of green from a thousand species of ferns and creepers. Nature has run riot here! The road is but a shelf along the ridge, mostly cut out of the solid rock which hangs overhead. In places it has to be built out, the timbers being bolted into the rocks. We overhang the torrent below whilst our three leaders turn the corners in front, chaffing their harness against the boulders as they pass. In summer, how lovely! But now? Years ago, at some pantomime in London or Paris, I saw ‘The Home of the Snow Queen’—a scene-painter’s dream, an idyll of canvas, lime light, and mechanism, which from boyish days remained fixed on my memory. It is here reproduced in nature in the Otira Gorge. The driven snow has covered everything with virgin purity. Every bow of the pine, each leaf on the rata is traced in white. Every creeper trailing from the trees is a delicate festoon of snow. The great fronds of the giant ferns bend beneath the weight of the flakes which cover them; they are a thousand times more lovely than in their spring verdancy. It is a supremely beautiful sight, one which the driver says he has seldom seen. It is fairyland itself! Cascades tumble down the rocks into Otira, whose living crystals are only equalled by the great icicles which overhang the road; sheets of ice cover the hillsides. Every turn brings a different beauty of form as we gallop along for four miles. Everything is pure and chaste as the heaven from which we tell children the snow falls.

“A fearsome journey this. We are shown many places where teams have been over the side of the road. But no accident has ever happened to the coach. The horses are trained like those of a circus, and the driver is the perfection of human forethought. At half-past seven we arrive at the end of the Gorge, and halt at an accommodation house for breakfast. The first thing is to clean the coach from snow. I am in a regular bank, and have to be dug out. The driver’s fur cap and beard are all frozen into one. He would serve as a good portrait of old Father Christmas. There are five bonnie young girls, rosy and healthy, at this place. The cold agrees with them. It has also given us a good appetite. On again, across the Otira, and over many mountain streams, which have suspension footbridges at the fords. In spring time, when the thaws take place, these torrents are often impassable for weeks. Through the fairy snow forest for miles until we strike the banks of the Teremakau, when suddenly the scene changes—everything is green instead of white. We are below the level of the snowfall, which is replaced by a soft rain. A long stretch of beautiful road called the Avenue is before us. There is a wonderful difference between the vegetation on the east and west coasts of New Zealand. It is the same as noticed on the west coast of North America, a luxuriance of Nature due to the heavy rainfall. Here there are great trees, giant ferns, which look like palms, lianas hanging from bough to bough, deep mossy carpets underneath, a thousand rills of water gurgling on each hand—it is tropical in the profusion of vegetable life. The forest meets overhead, and the road seems strangely familiar. It is the route from Fonwhari to La Foa. I wonder if Captain Rathonis, A.D.C., remembers the day when we rode thither, and our horses’ hoofs rattled amongst the skulls of the dead convicts. The telegraph wire