Page:Through South Westland.djvu/113

Rh exceedingly unlike one another that they look like plants of different genera. The Maori name is nei-nei, but the settlers call it the grass-tree. When the forest came to an end, we entered on a dreary extent of moraine—a chaos of ridges and stones which filled the valley. In part it was overgrown by thickets of manuka scrub and tangles of hooked “lawyer,” and tufts of grass and herbs covered the ridges. In a hollow was a Government hut, with bunks and stores; just then, this was occupied by two men, who had been for some time trying to build a bridge across the glacier river. The work was well started, when the river departed to the other side of the gorge, making a new channel for itself; and the men were living there, waiting in hope of it coming back. They offered us tea, and came to show us the best way to the glacier-foot. The glacier lies in a wide valley, shut in by steep, black-looking mountains; and between their walls, for nine miles beyond this, the Franz Josef fills the whole space, five hundred to a thousand feet deep. At last we found ourselves actually standing below the glacier “snout”—an awful barricade of dirty ice, stones, and mud, from whose foot the muddy torrent swirled away to our left. There was no crossing it without a horse. Great blocks of ice had fallen that day, shooting right across it, and some lay in the stream obstructing its passage. We could only gaze up at the glacier-foot—a cold, wet air smote our faces, the clouds hung low to the mountains, only E2