Page:Through South Westland.djvu/286

178 even flowers; for there, just beyond the torrent was a mass of Senecio Lyallii just like beautiful creamy cinnerarias, while the ribbon-woods hung their cherry-like blossoms overhead. No sign was there anywhere of former occupation, or attempt to penetrate the gorge. I think we were the first, at any rate, to reach that spot, though we knew others had climbed along the top in the far-off days of prospecting and exploring.

We came to the conclusion there was no possibility of going further to-day; we must bring up sleeping-bags and spend the night if we wanted to explore further, and so about two p.m. we turned back. Transome proposing we should follow the river, we began scrambling over the big boulders along the torrent; but we soon found this quite impossible, and had to take to climbing through the bush—a trackless labyrinth, where no foot save our own had ever been.

My remembrance of the next two hours is of a breathless, well-nigh hopeless struggle against obstacles too tremendous for my powers. The innumerable gullies were much deeper and wider down at the bottom, and they nearly all contained water—although dry above; sometimes we could hear it running underground, and one and all were choked with semi-tropical tangle.

Hooked “lawyer” clutched and tore us, lianes tied the trees together, and the living and the dead crowded and jostled each other up those precipitous slopes. It seemed a desperate game