Page:Through South Westland.djvu/110

50 story till to-day, when the Waiho Company comes with its rakes and shovels, tearing down the ever-lasting hills—all for the sake of these same little yellow discs. It was all so fascinating: I would dearly have loved to stay there and wash silt in the basin! With difficulty I was got away from that muddy trench. My companions were already calling to me from above, and I looked aghast at the means to get out—a scaffolding (rather than ladder) up which they had so nimbly scrambled—I had to pull myself up from bar to bar as best I might, unaided by rope or hand-rail. Once at the top, I waved farewell to the men below; we said good-bye to the parson, and Transome and I set off to get a nearer view of the glacier. It was about three o’clock, and the rain had ceased, but water poured down in all directions across the track, and the trees and ferns dripped moisture. It was really quite a good pathway, winding along about half-way up the right side of the gorge, with the tumultuous Waiho below us. The dense growth continued to quite near the ice; unknown plants and shrubs met the eye everywhere. Strange dracophyllums raised their branched stems twenty or thirty feet high, with purplish aloe-like leaves—no one would believe, to look at them, that these curious trees could belong to the heaths, yet such is the fact. They bear closely-packed panicles of red flowers, sometimes a foot-and-a-half long. D. latifolium is red, while D. longifolium is white, and there are five or six others in the family, so