Page:Through South Westland.djvu/242

148 Transome inspected it, and then invited me to ooklook [sic] in. One look was enough, and in that I had a vision more of a cowshed than a habitation for tired travellers! The chimney had fallen, daylight streamed across the dirty floor from a gaping hole—even the window-frame of the inner room had been broken up for fuel, and the glass in the other had fallen out.

I came back and urged we should cross the ford to the Old Homestead, and not unpack in such a place. Very reluctantly Transome consented, and we bumped down over rough stones and shingle, among rabbit-holes and flax stumps, to the river. We searched carefully till we found some old wheel ruts, and following them, crossed without difficulty a stretch of gravel and two shallow arms of the river, and then we came to the main stream. Crossing these smiling, shallow waters and yellow-grey ribbed sand had presented no difficulties at all! Could anything be easier?

The sun was fast drawing down behind a great barrier of purple rock; the glacier, hanging to its crest somewhat in the shadow, looked coldly remote and pure; the wide river-bed and sheltering hills were bathed in a flood of golden light; the heavy bush, clothing those more distant with a dark mantle, concealed their precipitous slopes and deep ravines. The spell of absolute stillness lay over all. Not a sound but a little murmur of the river over its shingly reaches. Around us was a wilderness of stones and bleached tree-trunks,