Page:Through South Westland.djvu/158

84 through the light-green leaves on the pendant bunches of fragile blossom, like cherry.

At times our road grew very dangerous; the usual waterfalls and streamlets poured across it, but frequent landslips had occurred, and at last we got to a place where the mountain had slipped down bodily. It was called the Blue Slips, and here I very nearly came to an end of the tour. The little track, not two feet wide, wavered like a scratch across the face—in and out, appearing round great buttresses, to be lost sight of again as it crept inwards skirting deep furrows worn by the torrents. Bluish-grey mud and rocks had in places overwhelmed trees still rooted, leaving only their tops sticking out of the débris. Far, far down, a river was roaring white at the bottom of the ravine. What followed happened so suddenly and unexpectedly, I was taken completely off my guard. Whether the screaming ka-kas frightened him, or whether I touched him with the spur, I can’t say: Tom bolted—here, where there was not an inch of room to spare—where that narrow scratch bent in and out at such sharp angles. I felt every moment I must be flung off at a tangent. I remember on the outward curve, as we swung madly round it, seeing the river below what looked like a grey fall of lava, but in a flash we were charging apparently into a blind gully; it seemed an eternity, and why we did not both shoot over the edge, off the track, and roll to the bottom, I know not. There was a terrible