Page:Through South Westland.djvu/231

Rh The sudden dark fell as we rode, and we had to trust the horses to get us back, which they did about 10 p.m.

Everyone was in bed; we turned the horses loose, and then tapped at the window, and soon the kind couple were fussing about, getting us supper and explaining we should not have turned down Dead Man’s Gully at all, but climbed the steep hills to the left and kept high all the time.

Next day we started by nine, and this time gained the summit of the range. It was very steep, so steep we had to climb beside the horses or even behind them; but what a view broke upon us from the top. Before us lay two arms of Lake Wanaka, embracing as it were a group of craggy mountains patched with snow; it was the deepest blue I have ever seen in water—ultramarine, with a dash of indigo. From the end of one arm issued a blue river, the Clutha, which wound in great loops and curves through brown plains of terrace formations, which descend from Lake Hawea in a succession of giant steps. They were dotted over with homesteads and cornfields and brilliant green oases. But we had to get down to the plains, and it looked as if we could jump from the crest where we were, it was so steep! At last we selected a spur. No English horse would go surely where those good beasts of ours hauled themselves up and let themselves down! It was all loose, broken stone and rock; a little dry thorn and thistles grew in places, and the sun beat fiercely from a cloudless