Page:Through South Westland.djvu/81

Rh —truly in South Westland one is never out of sight and sound of running water. Whether it be of the great rivers hurrying to the sea, or the white cascades or streams rippling fetlock-deep across the track, that voice of many glasses of water is always in one’s ears. There are times when the fierceness of the rivers fills one with a sense of impotence. A wide river-bed strewn with tree trunks and enormous boulders when the flood comes down—and they chafe and roll in wild turmoil—is an awesome enough sort of place. And the more you have to do with New Zealand rivers, the stronger becomes the awe in which you hold them. On the west they are often not twenty miles long in their whole course, and rising as they do in the snows of the high Alps, the rush of water is terrific for nine months of the year. It is almost as if they were live things possessed by some spirit, ready to work disaster to those who meddle with them. From this place, named the Forks, we had a choice of ways—either to continue to the coast, visiting Okarito on its lagoon—one of the last nesting-places in the South Island of the white crane —or to turn inland along the Southern Alps. The road leads by Mapourika, most beautiful perhaps of New Zealand lakes, lying below the jagged peaks of the Minarets. Beyond, the great Franz Josef glacier winds down from those homeless wastes of ice and