Page:Rambles on the Golden Coast of New Zealand.djvu/64

44 text of the “New Zealand Pilot,” and supplement its statements by a record of our cursory observations; and I do so in the belief that it is humbug to say that Milford Sound is, even to New Zealanders, in any degree familiar as a household word:—

Milford Sound, the northernmost of the series of inlets on this coast, though comparatively inconsiderable in extent, yet, in remarkable features and magnificent scenery, far surpasses them all. The mountains by which it is surrounded are the highest on the coast, with the exception of Mount Cook, 120 miles north. Pembroke Peak, about 3 miles inland, perpetually snow-capped, rises over its northern side to an elevation of 6700 ft.; and Lawrenny Peak, a very remarkable saddle-backed mountain, attains nearly the same elevation on the other side. But perhaps the most striking features are the remarkable-shaped Mitre, rising abruptly to a height of 5560 ft. immediately over the south side of the Sound, and a dome-shaped mountain on the opposite shore, nearly bare of vegetation, which, from its peculiar colour, resembles a huge mountain of metal. These Alpine features, and its narrow entrance, apparently still more contracted by the stupendous cliffs, perpendicular as a wall from the water’s edge to a height of several thousand feet, invest Milford Sound with a solemnity and grandeur which description can barely realise.

This is a compact summary of the prime elements of the scenery which gives Milford Sound its peculiar character, and they must be admitted to be not every day encountered even in such coast sailing as New Zealand presents. As presented to us they appeared under an almost cloudless sky, and with an atmosphere so clear that we could see to the summit of every peak, and, while realising the majestic dimensions of the mountains, could distinguish clearly their more minute details. It is sufficient to indicate the impressiveness of their dimensions to repeat that the mountains rise abruptly from the waters of the Sound to a height of a mile or a mile and a half; that the sailing passage between them is not more, in some places, than a quarter of a mile in breadth; and that in the waters below no bottom has been found at 200 fathoms deep. The details upon which the eye prefers to dwell, rather than realise these almost repelling features of the scene, are the snow-fields at the summits, the innumerable cascades which they produce, and the scattered vegetation on the mountain sides. The cascades are, perhaps, the features which communicate to the picture what it may possess of cheerfulness or charm. At every few yards they stream down the rocky mountain face, and, as we saw them, were traceable from the very patch of snow from which they emanated, a mile or more above our heads, until they reached the waters of the Sound, or were borne away in infinitesimal spray, visible only by the rainbows which they formed. Some were like mere skeins of thread, only at intervals traceable; others, like extended icicles, with their downward motion scarcely seen, and partaking of the silent, stolid aspect of the granite face over which they ran. But many danced a merry dance from “nook to crannie,” and from crag to peak; were, at one point, dashed into spray; amalgamated again at a lower level; and at last threw themselves over the rocky cliff, to become only the sport of the wind, or to disappear into space. The larger ones meandered, with a milky whiteness, in a well-defined channel, among herbage and shrubbery, and with the regularity of the feed of a mill-wheel gently dropped into a mass of moss, or into a quiet blue cove. What transformations they must all undergo, when the clouds add their contents to the meltings of the snow, it is not difficult to