Page:Through South Westland.djvu/294

184 circling overhead settled on a stump quite near us, and we could see his beautiful red-and-yellow under-wings. A beautiful bird: his glossy green-and-black plumage with turquoise pinion-feathers, make him the gayest among New Zealand birds in colouring. Alas, he is doomed. His newly-acquired habit of harrying the sheep puts a price on his head, and already he is confined to the less-frequented mountain solitudes. Yet the keas had never seen a sheep before the date of Captain Cook’s arrival!

It was excessively hot, and every hundred feet seemed to increase our difficulties. We tried a spur, which seemed to lead to the top of the first ledge, but it was broken by a deep gully cutting it across; so we took to a dry water-course and made some progress, but were stopped by a straight wall of rock. Transome was below, and I called to him I would try to the right. There was a nasty loose bit to be got over, running nearly sheer down to the lower part of the gully. I got across and peered round the buttress of rock. It fell away uncompromisingly, a drop of several hundred feet. No road that way. I started to get back: the stones kept flying down so, I had to wait till Transome could climb to the other side of the gully below me. When he gave the signal I tried to cross, but it was much harder to get back than it had been to get round the buttress, and before I knew I was shooting down in a shower of stones to the bottom — fortunately feet foremost. I grasped a tuft of