Page:Through South Westland.djvu/162

88 trees from the fierce glare. Here we could canter. We knew we must be nearing the Haast, though the river was hidden as yet. The swamps had given place to good land, bush-covered, but with open grassy spaces, and through this, about half past five, we came to the great river. The wide bed stretched a couple of miles perhaps in front of us, divided into long shingle islands by blue, hurrying streams. The farther shore was misty blue in the heat; purple tree-clad hills, surmounted by bare, rocky mountains, made a fitting gateway whence the river issued, and at its mouth lay a lagoon some miles in extent. Where the river finally reaches the sea there is a sand bar, utterly ruining what might otherwise be a harbour. When we saw these streams that swirled silently seawards in their irresistible might, we understood the cause of those miles of bleaching trees we had ridden along. In the wild storms and floods they are swept out to sea, only to be hurled back by the Pacific, tossed backwards and forwards in the broken water that extends for a league or more at the Haast mouth, and gradually piled along the beach by the tides. Beyond the first stream we could see a kind of beacon erected on a desert island of stones and shingle, and we splashed through easily enough, hoping against hope to find a telephone or bell, or some means of communication with the farther shore. There was only a broken wire. We took out the field-glasses and scanned the belt of flax and broken ground, where