Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/24

20 paradise duck and swamp hen thrive, but horse and rider may be hopelessly bogged in awful quagmire.

Westward the three great river-beds spread, first for ten or twelve miles as broad U-shaped valleys and then as deep precipitous verges leading away to the supplying glaciers. There the streams are lost to view.



Their flood height can be gauged by the broad reaches of naked shingle flanking the water’s edge. Everywhere else below the hardy tussock is supreme. Above, peaks, jagged and white, stretch away to the great heights of the Southern Alps themselves. It is all so appallingly gigantic that man seems helplessly insignificant.