Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/163

Rh or ‘dividing range’ of the Middle Island. These mountains attain their highest elevation, further north, in Mount Cook, a snowy peak rising 13,200 feet above the sea-level, and visible in clear weather at a distance of more than a hundred miles to the mariner approaching New Zealand; thus forming a noble monument of the illustrious navigator who first recommended the planting of an English settlement in this country. To quote Admiral Richards:—‘A view of the surrounding country from the summit of one of the mountains bordering the coast, of from 4000 to 5000 ft. in elevation, is perhaps one of the most grand and magnificent spectacles it is possible to imagine, and standing on such an elevation rising over the south side of Caswell Sound, Cook’s description of this region was forcibly called to mind. A prospect more rude and craggy is rarely to be met with, for inland appeared nothing but the summits of mountains of a stupendous height, and consisting of rocks that are totally bare and naked, except where they are covered with snow.’ We could only compare the scene around us as far as the eye could reach, north to Milford Sound, south to Dusky Bay, and eastward inland for a distance of sixty miles, to a vast sea of mountains of every possible variety of shape and ruggedness; the clouds and mist floated far beneath us, and the harbour appeared no more than an insignificant stream. The prospect was most bewildering, and even to a practised eye, the possibility of recognising any particular mountain as a point of the survey from a future station, seemed almost hopeless. The following extract from Dr Hector’s account of Milford Sound shows the probable mode of its formation:—‘Three miles from the entrance of the Sound it becomes contracted to the width of half-a-mile, and its sides rise perpendicularly from the water’s edge sometimes for 2000 ft., and then slope at a high angle to the peaks that are covered with perpetual snow. The scenery is quite equal to the finest that can be enjoyed by the most difficult and toilsome journey into the Alps of the interior; and the effect is greatly enhanced, as well as the access made more easy by the incursion of the sea, as it were, into the alpine solitudes. The sea, in fact, now occupies a chasm that was in past ages ploughed by an immense glacier; and it is through the natural progress of events by which the mountain mass has been reduced in altitude, that the ice stream has been replaced by the waters of the ocean. The evidence of this change may be seen at a glance. The lateral valleys join the main one at various elevations, but are all sharply cut off by the precipitous wall of the sound, the erosion of which was, no doubt, continued by a great central glacier long after the subordinate and tributary glaciers had ceased to exist. The precipices exhibit the marks of ice-action with great distinctness, and descend quite abruptly to a depth of 800 to 1200 ft. below the water-level. Towards its head the sound becomes more expanded, and receives several large valleys that preserve the same character, but radiate in different directions into the highest ranges. At the time that these valleys were filled with glaciers, a great ice lake must have existed in the upper and expanded portion of the sound, from which the only outlet would be through the chasm which forms its lower part.’

“On account of the great depth of water in these inlets, and of the sudden storms of