Page:Through South Westland.djvu/129

Rh so glossy and ornamental among the small-leaved pines. But one could go on for ever dwelling on the strange varieties of the bush, and its stranger affinities—it is full of anomalies and unexpectedness.

Melanesian species are largely represented, so again are Australian and Tasmanian, and many a tree and plant has its nearest relatives in South American forests, or the lonely islands of the Southern Pacific.

For a long time we had been ascending, and must have reached a height of a couple of thousand feet; and now the view below us gradually unfolded. Hill beyond hill, the forest undulated away to the foot of stately, snow-clad mountains, whose domes and peaks glittered in the sunshine. We knew the Fox glacier came down there from the ice-fields between Mount Haidinger and the Haast Peak, with the Douglas Peak (10,107 feet) lying to the north, but we could not see it. The plain spread out below us for thirty miles, dotted with clearings—blue streams from the glacier wandering through it. There was the Cook river, which gives its name to the flat. The view was bounded far away by more tree-clad hills and unopened country, and the wide river-bed of the Karangarua lay at its further side.

It was a fertile, beautiful land, lying spread out at our feet.

Transome was a long way ahead, for I could not hurry: I wanted to look and had dismounted for