Page:Through South Westland.djvu/101

Rh Each had its own outer door, and as the windows were not made to open, I had to keep my door open all night, and as I lay in bed could hear the rumbling of the glacier and the roaring of the Waiho, and see the stars as they marched across the sky. There was also a store and a post-office, and a weekly coach-service, for the Waiho boasts a gold mine—of which more later. Near the store there is a room where a service is held once in two months, for the diggers and dwellers in the gorge, and we heard there had been a congregation of nineteen that Sunday. The parson was making one of his periodical visitations, and came to meet us as we went up to the punga house. The store was a fascinating place, and I felt sure we should lay in some indispensable things for our further trip, but I could only get stamps—the cord-soled shoes, picks, billies, buckets, axe-heads, and other useful things we left. Transome tried to buy a hat. He had started in a new Panama, which, from repeated wettings and sittings-on, was shrunk and threatening to fall into holes; but it seemed a hat was the one thing the store could not provide.

That first afternoon we devoted to the inspection of the hot springs. It was indescribably weird to have a pool of boiling water close to a glacier! We went up along a torrent-bed, and in a clearing on the edge of the bush was a corrugated-iron hut, a simple sort of bath-house with a wooden trough