Page:Through South Westland.djvu/98

42 the purple-black crags of the gorge. But strangest of all is where the glacier and the forest meet, and the splendid scarlet of the ratas seems almost to touch the ice and snow. The forest itself, ringed with vivid green of tree-fern and a hundred subtropical plants, adds the last touch of vivid contrast. Rhododendrons against Himalayan snow may come to mind, but Himalayan landscapes are too vast. . . . . . This is South Westland, and nowhere else. We, who have seen it, want to compare it with nothing else. The glacier comes down to the very fringe of the tree-ferns and the ratas, to within 600 feet of sea level and ten miles of the sea—as the crow flies; and this in a climate moist and warm for the greater part of the year—a climate that favours the most varied production of rare and lovely ferns, astelias, and many a shrub and plant cultivated with utmost care at home. Was it any wonder that I gazed spellbound—trying to take it in, as the eye travelled over that marvellous picture?

There was a fine new hotel being built out on the flat, but we drove to the little old accommodation-house at the edge of the bush—a punga house, i.e., built of fern-logs on end, filled in with moss and grass. A house of this kind may even grow—for the ferns are very tenacious of life, and I have seen a fence where the posts were nearly all sending out spreading heads of beautiful fern.

There was a central guest-room; and other little rooms had been added as they were needed.