Page:Through South Westland.djvu/36

6 at the head of the wide valley—a couple of miles, perhaps, across. This is always a dangerous crossing, and when the mail-coach cannot get through, the mailman brings the bags across on one of the horses. Passengers under the circumstances, must have patience. It is told of a celebrated admiral whose coach was caught in the flood, and who was rescued with difficulty, that he remarked: “He had been at sea all his life and never been wrecked, till the Waimakariri River did it.”

Once across, we rode up the Bealey. The gorge wound among steep mountains clothed in great part with the southern beech; waterfalls were frequent, and fine views of snow-capped ranges. Then we got to the divide called Arthur’s Pass where are three small tarns lying on a mass of old moraine, which seems to fill the space between two parallel ranges. From one side of this the waters flow east, and from the other west. All this alpine meadow was beautiful with flowers: giant celmisias with satiny-white petals like enormous daisies, mingled with snow-white gentians, and the wonder of the Alps—the mountain lily.

It is a pure white kingcup with golden centre, the leaves as large as saucers, and often the flowers are two or three inches across. As usual in the New Zealand mountains, most flowers were white. The plants here are specially interesting, because of the meeting of outliers from east