Page:Through South Westland.djvu/233

Rh We stopped on the rise above the lake. The scene was perfectly lovely: that wonderful blue sheet of water, stretching away and away thirty miles and more among mountains of a still tenderer tone of blue. How grandly they grouped themselves all round, how gloriously white the snows shone, but, above all, what a study in blues was that first view of Wanaka.

We rode up to a charming hotel with wide verandahs and a big fruit-garden about it, producing every variety of European fruit—a land of plenty indeed. I went inside, while Transome saw to the horses, and found a quaint, rambling old house, with all sorts of annexes running out into the garden, with glass doors in lieu of windows opening directly on to lawns and fruit trees. The pleasant-faced girl who came to me said they were quite full, but we could have the bathrooms!

I questioned could they spare them, and was assured in such weather most people bathed in the lake—at any rate we could go no further, and so it was settled; we were only too glad to be taken in at all.

Very soon we made our way to the lake-shore, where the water rippled on a beach of fine white pebbles, deepening four yards out sufficiently to float the small steamer that plies on the lake. The water was absolutely clear, and as we swam about we could look down through the cool, green depths to every stone on the bottom.

The hotel was excellent; full as it was, we were