Page:Through South Westland.djvu/239

Rh feet of water, so absolutely clear every ancient tree trunk and rock was visible on the sandy bottom. And the farther views kept changing, and the lake widening and reaching away into far blue distances, thirty miles and more to the northward.

Then the scene changed, and we were driving between rugged hills covered for the most part with greenery; away from the lake and across a little flat to where stark, black mountains, patched with snow and seamed with waterfalls, reared up. These were the outliers of a range that runs up the Matukituki valley, but does not join the Mount Aspiring group, whither we were bent.

To our right a plain was gradually unfolding, with hay crops and standing corn just beginning to ripen, and some miles off the homestead of Russell’s Flat lay half-hidden in its willow and poplar trees. Beyond all this the wide river-bed stretched between enclosing hills for seventeen miles, and the farther view ended in the outer walls and bastions of Mount Aspiring, its snows and glaciers interrupted by patches of black crags and precipices, which, even at this distance, looked awful.

It is not a single lonely peak, but a group of mountains cut into on the east and west by the deep gorges of the two Matukituki rivers. This was our first near view (though still twenty miles off) we had had of our mountain, and somewhere up there lay the wondrous Ice-caves and the Silver Cone we sought.