and a flax sandal made the imprint in the sand on river beaches. Rock-bound gorges, snow-bound gorges, deep crevasses, splintered peaks: these were sights that met the first explorers. And consider the Maori explorers. One stimulus to the first crossing of the Southern Alps was the discovery of a pass now mapped as Bownings Pass. Draw a line on a South Island map between Ashburton and Hokitika and it crosses the Main Divide at Brownings. Raureka was the first to find and to use this pass. She was held to be mad by the Ngati Wairangi of the West Coast and escaped up the Arahura river, home of greenstone, the valued pounamu. At the head of the river she found the pass, crossed it, and descended the mountain valleys. Near the place we now know as Geraldine she fell in with a group of Ngai Tahu. When they saw her greenstone and she admitted there was plenty more across the ranges, a war party gathered. The Ngai Tahu crossed the pass to Westland, fought with ngati Wairangi, and returned laden with the stone. The significance was not so much the discovery of greenstone, for its presence in Westland must have been known long before that. The significance was the perfecting of a short route across the mountains. The alternatives to the mountain pass were long coastal journeys on foot or dangerous canoe voyages along a storm-beaten land till Arahura was reached. Raureka made her crossing about the year 1700, and if the legend of her Rough country above a tributary of the Buller Gorge. (John Pascoe Photograph.) exploit is true, all other mountain passes known to the Maori must have been found since her journey. Perhaps a greater stimulus to bush and mountain travel was war. The old-time Maori warrior needed speed on foot and knowledge of country that enabled him to outflank or surprise his enemies. He had to know all the arts of living off the land. In other words his natural training as guerilla leader or commando officer excelled anything that he would now learn in an army school of bush and mountain warfare. The stories of some of the crossings of the passes, as told in the next article will underline this fact. Living off the land was indeed a technical skill. For a party to prepare for a transalpine trail meant the gathering of wekas packed in kelp bags. Dried eels and whitebait would be useful to add to eels caught on the journey. Berries of totara and kahikitea would give variety to roots of the fern katoke. Dried mamaku (black-ribbed punga) was another staple diet. These dried foods would be soaked overnight and then roasted and pounded between stones. Six men would start their trip with a hundredweight of food. If the party was large, the chief would carry only weapons, and slaves would take the mats and the food. Women would take heavy loads. The pakeha mountaineer of today would be no better served by his modern dehyrdated foods or his unreliable air-drops of supplies. The rough trails were hard on footwear. The Maori parties wore sandals that had to be replenished from flax or mountain grass as they wore out. In his book ‘Memories of Mountains and Men’ (1946) Arthur P. Harper recalls that his father Leonard told him that in 1857 flax sandals were much better than boots for travelling along the rugged coastline, and were used by him and Tarapuhi. In the South Island Maori Women's Welfare Leagues these sandals are still being made today. Friction from dry sticks gave fire for cooking. Live birds such as pigeons and tuis could be captured by traditional means. At Karangarua in South Westland there were gulls' eggs for delicacies to be added to shellfish from the sea. Flax ropes were used for tricky cliffs or river bluffs. They were mostly made on the spot from flax or snowgrass, whichever material was handy. The Nelson Examiner of 12th September, 1846, has an account of the Brunner-Heaphy expedition down the West Coast from below Cape Farewell. Referring to the Tauparikaka cliff. Rocky Point, the author said: ‘We certainly deemed the descent impracticable, without a ladder. The sight of a rotten native made rope which dangled over the precipice made us perhaps to imagine the descent to be more critical than it in reality was’. The rivers themselves were crossed on rafts of wood or raupo—moki—and weather forecasting was made possible by a study of clouds and twinkling stars. The trade, between east and west coasts was taramea scent—gum from the spear plant—and greenstone. These and related facts are given by H. D. Skinner in the Journal of the Polynesian Society of 1912 based on notes made in 1897 by G. J. Roberts, Commissioner of Crown Lands for Westland, who gleaned them from Maoris living at the mouth of the Jacobs River in South Westland. The article is called ‘Maori Life on the Poutini Coast’.