The Fairyland of the Giants

New Zealand Graphic, 25 December 1910, Page 18

The Fairyland of the Giants

Mfi AU ,f // 1 ']4ILFORD

The j Fi nesf f I Wai k i n the World.

Written specially for the “ Christmas Graphic ” by Charles C. Reade. PHOTOS BY TOURIST DEPARTMENT AND OTHERS.

<pHE South-west extremity ! of New Zealand ends L abruptly in an aggregation of mountain chains and peaks, pierced by waterways of incomparable loveliness. Many a snow-strewn height, caught by

the shafts of the westering sun, turns in rugged glory to the Tasman Sea. There are waters on the West —great fjiords beckoning in reaches of silver at the base of the mountains. There are waters on the East — silent inland seas, floating many a fairy isle beneath the immensity of white and solemn mountains. The largest of the lakes is Te Anau, an irregularly-shaped waterway, pierced by fjiords of marvellous and gigantic beauty. It stretches for forty miles, a burnished flood in the sunlight — a floor of star-strewn jet in the night. Its waters are overpowered by mountain ranges, ribbed with snow. They plunge sheer down into the lake, walls of immense portent, split and torn by centuries of glacial action. Mountain peak and chain gather at the

head of the lake into an amphitheatre of extraordinary splendour. Ihe morning mists unfurl battlements of snow soaring in the blue. The bush trembles down to the water’s edge, radiant with sunlight. Some presence from the infinite reigns unseen among the hills, and the earth is silent and spellbound with its beauty.

It is here one finds the promise of impending glory. The head of the lake is the gateway to the famous Te Anau.Milford track. Three and thirty miles of unending wonder lie before the pedestrian. It is the tramp of a lifetime. Some do it in one day, some in three, whilst others can never find time enough to absorb its attractions. Glade House, the Government home for tourists, admirably appointed and conducted, is the starting point, on the banks of the Clinton River. Stout boots, a light change of underclothing, a towel and (if you wish) a toothbrush are the principal needs

1 the exigencies of the situation demand. Three days make an easy journey of it, with intervals for repairs and rest at the two excellent huts on the track. The latter plunges immediately into a noble forest. It beckons through leafy aisles and cloisters carpeted with moss and ferns. The sunlight shimmers through the dark green leaves and falls in shafts of gold among the cool recesses of the forest. In and out among the giant trees the walk winds along the banks of the Clinton—an ice-cool crystal river, fresh from the mountain tops. Its waters are remarkably transparent, and green as a sun-kissed emerald. The bed of the river is a highway of great boulders. The waters come leaping and laughing amongst them, a veritable mountain torrent in the heydey of youth roaring down the valley. Its voice is never still, save where the crystal flood gathers beneath the trees in pools, brimming with exquisite and translucent depths. And, above it all, dwarfing river and forest, and towering into the walls of the valley, are the mountains —snowfields and peaks pointing to skies of profound and ineffable purity. It is impossible to describe “the finest walk in the world’’ in so brief a space as this. One must go and pant along its varying grades and realise what immensity and what beauty are to be found there amid a prolonged pilgrimage. The first day is spent ascending the Clinton Canyon—a huge ravine reaching up thousands of feet to snow and glacial fields of supreme altitude. The second goes in climbing McKinnon’s Pass —a low saddle of grass-strewn rock, lying between the two massive mountains, Hart and Balloon. The summit is 3,500 feet above sea-level. Immediately on the other side the trizk falls sharply two thousand feet in five miles to the head of the Arthur Valley and the Sutherland Falls, close to which the

night is spent. The third day sees the tourist wandering down a gentle acclivity side by side with the Arthur River through a valley of extraordinary and incomparable loveliness. It ends in Lake Ada, and beyond is Milford Sound itself. The magnitude of the Clinton Canyon is overpowering, as it is seen looking back from the ascent of the pass. Its unsealed heights mingle in the clouds. The snowfields give birth to numberless waterfalls. They come trickling down the heights at first a silver thread, then a ribbon of light, and lastly a desperate flood, plunging madly down to the river. Lesser streams come floating down in veils of spray—gossamer creations spun in the sunlight. It seems as if amid this mighty valley of the

rama of extraordinary impressiveness. The country is squeezed up into mountain chains, pointing many a fairy and blameless pinnacle to the blue. Great valleys open up on all sides, dotted with forests. In one glimpse the eye surveys part of the roof of the island, and is dazzled by its rugged snowclad immensity. The pass is

a narrow precipitous ridge uniting Hart and Balloon—the former huge, humped-back and sullen, the latter peerless, radiant and unsealed. Adjoining both is the marbled majesty of Jervois, a rocky stronghold quilted with eternal snows. Its superb glacial field is one of the wonders of the track —just the white frozen roof of a fortress slanting up to a black and gloomy keep Far below the track winds round the base, and plunges down through bush and laughing torrents to the bed of the Arthur River. In the last mile a thousand feet is

mountains the waters of the earth hold high and eternal festival. But it is from the summit itself that the significance of New Zealand’s Alpine splendour bursts upon one. A huge slice of country, stretching as far as the eye can reach, lies before one in a pano-

dropped, and then comes one of the sights of the earth. Up a neighbouring valley, through rocky nooks and wonderful grottoes of moss-hung trees, dripping with dew, the wanderer suddenly beholds the great Sutherland Falls. They are at their best after rain, rumbling down 1,904 feet in an orgy of flood. At the foot one may easily be drenched to the skin by flying spray and scud, but what matter if you hear amid that great solemn valley the big, gruff voice of the mills of the gods grinding out thunder to the hills? The headwaters of the Arthur River spring from a valley walled in by precipices.

The little huts that provide the needs of the traveller nestle here at the base of the mountains. - There are no acclivities soaring up in graceful slopes to the skyline—only the walls of a canyon rising to the perpendicular and tapering off in dizzy peaks. Not hundreds, but thousands of feet is the altitude to

which those torn and ragged faces reach, leaving the watcher spellbound with wonder. There is Nature’s revelation of the mind of Dore, the vision of Dante. The benediction of the dying sun touches the heights, and they redden as the valley is hushed and still. Nightfall comes with

tenderness and mystery. The dusk is strewn with stars. The voice of the river murmurs down the valley. Deep in the forest an owl is hooting and the weka calls with plaintive note to itp mate. A sense of infinite sadness broods in the solitude, where the wanderer dreams—a pilgrim over the edge of the world engulfed in its immensity.

If it is not unbecoming to your conviction you will pray for rain during the night that one sleeps in the heart of the valley. We did. A terrific thunderstorm came and shook the moun

tains. It reverberated round the canyon and f entered our hearts. The roof trembled and groaned under the downpour, and the lightning went delirious with fire across the zenith. Ihe guns of God were speaking to the earth. Next morning transformation reigned. All around from summit and precipice, plunging down from the clouds, came waterfalls innumerable. The mountains were spuming with the deluge of the night. Great cascades leapt from crag to crag, streaming wildly into the river. Others floated down from the heights like falls in fairyland —each a dripping cloud, breaking into rainbows

i:i the sunlight. The river receives them, roaring and angry with flood. It rages through the forest, torn with rapids and impotent with force. One beholds the earth transformed. It is the master stroke of Nature, veiling mountain and precipices with cascades untold, and hurling her manifold waters in triumph down the startled valley. The floods and the falls disappear as fast as they rise, and the track speedily assumes tranquillity. To wander down the Arthur Valley the morning after a thunderstorm is to realise its unexampled loveliness. It roams through forest glades and valleys strewn with ferns. There is not the gigantic, lhe almost appalling

splendour of the Clinton Canyon. The river for the greater part is set in a wider basin, reaching out to mountain vales and peaks glittering with snow. One range masks another as they each come into view and the traveller swings down the valley drinkn.g in its virgin sweetness. Where the canyon thrills and overpowers, the Arthur Valley enchants by its vagrant and radiant beauty. The bush greets one at almost every turn. No imagination can visualise the reality of the word. It is not merely the wooded giants, matured by centuries of growth. There is, too, the variety of innu-

merable foliages, the richness and density of the undergrowth, that unfold a pageant of glory to the eye. It

is the raiment of a virgin isle keyed up to joyous siennas and yellows. They flash madly in the sunlight over the deep, cool shadows of the bush. Not a speck of soil can be seen for the mosses and ferns that carpet the earth

and embroider the nakedness of the big brown trunks. The transcendent note is reached in the green and silver leaves of the tree fern. With arms outstretched. they arch and fall into an exquisite droop, dripping a rare, shy beauty amid the splendour of the forest.

Towards evening, when the sun shafts are sloping shadows across the valley, the track unexpectedly opens out, and Lake Ada bursts in panorama before one, bush-clad, silent, and framed in majesty—a realisation of pure beauty. Three days of splendour are behind, gathered with startling contrast into one of the loneliest spots that was ever transfigured by Nature in her supreme mood. The lake, in all its serene and unruffled splendour, would seem the culmination —the final note of glory. But, no! ’

Last, and incomparable in its

grandeur, comes Milford Sound. This famous inlet, winding in from the open sea through a canyon of unbroken loveliness, is one

of the most beautiful waterways in the world. Its crowning glory is the Mitre Peak — a stately pinnacle plunging from its snow-clad serenity full fifty-five hundred feet sheer down into waters many fathoms deep. No silver flood ever mirrored the majesty that fills this supreme haven of the sea, gathered

/ as it is into the very heart of the mountains. It is said to have been formed by a glacier—a Titanic glacier flung across the peaks and ridges that now soar into radiant snowstrewn heights. Through centuries of evolution the glacier forced its way down through the solid rock until the sea burst in upon it and filled the haven with beauty. No language will ever tell of the ineffable purity of the Mitre, of Pembroke, or the neighbouring peaks. There serene majesty and simple beauty go hand-in-hand, even

to their most secret recesses. No tumult of Nature disturbs the shining fjiord, not even the smoking splendour of the two falls that plunge over its precipices and are soothed in the peace of its eternal flood. Milford Sound is a veritable fairyland of the giants. From the waters of the earth it uplifts its pageant of naked walls and forest tapestry to snowfield

and peak soaring in the blue. It is a paen of glory proclaiming the infinite. It seems when the mists gathered there in the morn take up their drapery in the sunlight and lift, earth and sky are transfigured, and across the world Paradise has dawned.