Through South Westland.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVLI, Issue 10, 6 September 1911, Page 52

Through South Westland.

LADY’S ADVENTI RES IN NEW ZEALAND. SCENIC MARVELS. LONDON, July 21. Messrs*. Withvrby and Co., of London, recently published Mrs. Maud A. Moreland's “Through South Westland,” a fascinating and liberally illustrated volume, concerning her adventures in that part of the South Island which lies lietween the Southern Alps and the Pacific. Much of this region was practically unexplored when the author, accompanied by a friend whom she calls iTransome. went through it on horseback and afoot three years ago. It embraces a great variety of mountainous and forest country, rich in grand scenery, and abounding in dill: ultics for the adventurous travellers, who had often to make their wa\ at much lisk, an I more than once their lives were in peril. The author describes the romantic features of tin* district traversed with a facile pen, and draws so fascinating a picture of what she saw that many who read her book will possibly be tempted to realise for themselves the pleasure of exploring a regision so full of attraction for the adventurous spirit. The journey

began at Christchurch. but its real difficulties did not commence until the mountain range had been crossed, and Hokitika had been reached. From this point the Main South Road was followed as far as it remained a practicable road, and then the travellers had to make their way as best they could. Since the author and her companion passed that way the road has been made a good driving track as far as the Franz Jonef, with the main rivers bridged. Their journey extended south to some distance on the farther side of the river llaast, a stream which had never before been crossed by a lady tourist. Then the travellers turned to the east, crossed the boundary of the province of Otago, and made the homeward journey by Lake Hawea, the Lindis Pass, over the McKenzie Plains, and through South Canterbury, covering altogether some seven or eight miles. It would be impracticable to attempt to follow the author through all the stages of her tour. *A few features only of her interesting narrative can be indicated. The Primeval Forest. She has a good deal to say about the botany of the South West Ia nd forests, which for the most part are occupied by plants and trees peculiar to New Zealand, and she is profoundly impressed by the primeval condition of much of the country passed through:

“When Tramome teased me by reviling the forest for its lack of human interest, enough spirit returned to contradict. But in very truth that is what strikes one so forcibly. League after league, range beyond range—‘A l:iml when* no man conies nor hath come Since the making of the world.’ A Noble Glacier. There is a very effective description of the Franz Josef glacier: — “When we had climbed over the mountainous pile of frozen dirt and stones, and stood at last on the great frozen river, the ice proved to be in the worst possible condition. The waves of that river had tossed themselves into every fantastic shape. Classy pinnacles and serrated edges rear themselves hundreds of feet over deep crevices—at times it seemed like climbing the walls of a vast cathedral of crystal, and every step had to be cut. The colouring was marvellous: turquoise and green—and that blue of glacier-pools which is neither — mingled with opal and pink. In two hours we had not progressed a .quarter of a mile, but we were high enough to see its winding course, and the glittering snow-fields at its head. Then we turned to look back. An enormous roche montoiuiee seemed to block its course to one side, and we looked away to the waving forest with its crimson ratas and Okarito lying in a blue haze.”

Passages like this show that th» author is able to realise her impression, with real graphic power, and she is always equal to the occasion. Riven Rock and Snowfield. -Many fine descriptive passages w.tl be found in the second section of the volume, in which is recorded a trip made twelve months later to Mt. Aspiring. Here the scenery is on an even grander scale than that of the rerun previously visited, and it was then practically unexplored; though since the central peak has been conquered by Cap. tain Head, R.A. The author’s curiosity had been Whetted by a member of the Government survey staff:— He spoke of wonderful ice falls. o f great glaciers, of a river that shot fullgrown from beneath an arch of ico, o f ice-caves, and a vast blue ice-fall, where thousands of tons plunged into an abyss with deafening roar. “Aye,” he said, “and the finest sight I ever saw was the top of Mt. Aspiring, .where it up like a great silver cone again,: the blue.” Mrs. realised, when she was able a year later to see it ail with her own eyes, that not one-half of the marvels of this region had been told, and she convinces the reader of it by an impressive series of word-pictures, only one of which the limitation of space permits me to quote: — “And now we began to see the full beauty and the solemn grandeur of the place. To right and left the mountains converged till the whole valley was blocked by a mighty mass, well-nigh perpendicular, whose summits were snowcovered to within a few hundred feet of their tops, where the black rocks ran up in pyramids too steep for snow. Along this wall the eye travelled eastwards over pure snowfields to a magnificent ice-fall, looking ... as if it must bo actually moving, its colour exquisite in its tones of green below the snowwhite waves. And then rose clear and pure ‘ the great silver cone against the blue.’ One unbroken wave of snow seemed to run up one side to the very top, which, looked at with the naked eye, appeared almost a point, but the field-glasses revealed a double crown. The face towards us was only lightly powdered with snow’; it was almost sheer from where it rose. The mountains presented a savagely’ broken view of riven rock and snow’-field, culminating in a mighty curved wave of glacier which overhung a sheer precipice—a purple, misty gulf, so deep and dark we could only’ guess its probable rtepth. . . . Farther up it looked like a great cleft in the mountain wall; and another glacier blocked the head of it—an awesome chasm. . . . As we gazed in silence we saw’ the whole lip of the curved wave break and plunge downwards, the roar reaching our waiting cars like artillery.” Mrs. Moreland gives many interesting sketches of the isolated settlers whom she met here and there, some of them quite pathetic—as in the case of Mrs. Macpherson, the lady of the “line shieling” up in the hills between Pembroke and Mt. Aspiring, who averred that she was nearly’ driven deaf by the roar of the avalanches and the waterfalls when the snows were melting. “And then, it is that lonely, too—oh, you don't know what it is to see another face up hero beside your children’s! It’s sometimes eighteen months, and once it was two full years, before I saw the face of a living woman!”