NEW ZEALAND SUNSETS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XIX, 9 November 1895, Page 570

NEW ZEALAND SUNSETS.

A SUNSET IN THE SOUTHERN ALPS.

(BY

THE WARRIGAL.)

SUNSETS on the low land, sunsets on the high land, sunsets inland, and sunsets by the sea, all have beauties peculiarly their own, but no sunsets have such character as those on the eastern slopes of our great mountain ranges. The Southern Alps running north and south cut the day shorter for the people eastward, and one sees the sun set whilst yet it is strong with evening radiance. The strong light playing on snow peaks and fields of ice makes wonderous contrasts against the gloom of deep gorges and the blackness of hanging forests. The vast heights look higher at sunset, the

gorges and chasms look deeper, and all the power of rushing mighty rivers, all the giandeur of vast peaks and crags, all the mysterious force of the mountain world, is intensified, exaggerated at sunset. I have seen hundreds of sunsets amidst our New Zealand mountains, from the passes in the greatdividing range,from spurs of the Seaward Kaikouras, peaks of the Quartz Ranges, from the wonderful alluvial plateaus abone Wanaka and Hawea, from the head waters of Rakaia and Rangitata, and from many other places; but out of all these sunsets there stands one

prominent because of its strangeness, unforgotten because of its awful beauty.

I stood on a high saddle of the Southern Alps one evening in winter time. Above me towered huge mountains white with winter snows ; below me was a lake frozen into one great sheet of burnished steel. From three sides of this lake rose cliffs, bold, rocky, black as coal ; from the open side of the lake the earth slanted steeply down to the valley of a mighty snow river ; from the edge of the black cliffs ascended long slopes of ini maculate snow reaching high toward a pale green ski All the deep hollows were in shadow, but the high peaks shone with the glory of sunlight. An hour before these peakshad been hidden by clouds so soft and white that mountains and clouds seemed one carved mass of snow reaching to the very roof of heaven ; then a wind sprang up and drove the mists away, rolling the clouds before it with a slow, grand motion, and as the cloud left the peaks this wind caught up masses of frozen snow and hurled it in huge volumes into the sunlight, where it blazed into glorious rainbow hues. Then the wind fell, and over the mountain world came a deep calm-a calm well suited for the majesty and solemnity of the scene. "The mountains were crowned with the radiance of sunset; shafts of light shot between great peaks, or blazed against precipitousslopes. Crimson andgold, the royal coloursof sunset, became the evening robes of mountain monarchs. Flashing gems in kinglydiademsare poor and tawdry compared withthegleamandglitter of sunset on those mountain crests. Slowly the colours faded front slope after slope and peak after peak until only the highest summits retained their gorgeous crowns, and then a veil of darkness seemed to fall over the lower woild ; but through this veil the snowfields gleamed ghostly white—an effect grand enough to make a man, standing there in solitude, bend his head to the majesty of nature. The last colours fled from the frozen heights, and then the calm was broken. There came a sound like the rustling of a thousand mighty wings, and lightning, blazing green and terrible. The dwellers on the plain far below might see it and know it as the herald of the fierce nor’-wester, and the fierce nor’-wester came with a voice like a thousand thunders. There was the breaking of great ice walls, the crashing of avalanches, the roar of mighty wind in the dark gorges. Time enough then for a man to leave mountain heights, and fascination enough to make him linger — the fascination of grandeur, of awful power.