There is nothing gradual about the descent to Canterbury. Nor is it a zig-zag. It begins in a rocky gut and falls to a steep shingle slide which in winter would be frozen snow or ice. In summer one can run down the shingle but it is rough going, and Raureka would have had battered sandals after two thousand feet of descent. Then the valley is wide and grassy. Instead of the dense rain forest or tangled scrub of Westland there is the lush river flat and broad boulder beaches that give easy travelling all the way down to Lake Coleridge. Passing the Mathias and Rakaia rivers, Raureka would have reached the Canterbury Plains near Methven and thus had a clear way to Geraldine, where legend holds that she met the Ngaitahu. Browning's Pass was much used by gold prospectors in the rushes of the sixties and even now there are traces of their attempts to blast tracks around bluffs: And on Browning's Pass itself there is a little miner's hut, in which you can sleep if you first remove the bellows. Browning's Pass is now a key link in the Three Pass route from the Bealey to Hokitika, and many trampers make this their first trip across the Main Divide of the Southern Alps. Mountain clubs have huts scattered along the route, and there is a fair track through the worst of the bush. Between the Waiau in Canterbury, and the Maruia and other West Coast rivers there are several low passes which were reputed to have been used by Maori travellers. Most notable of these is the Lewis Pass, which now has a good highway and service cars. The mountains in this region do not rise above seven thousand feet and The Bealey (Canterbury) side of Arthur's Pass. (Photo: John Pascoe.) though they support a few snowfields there are no permanent glaciers. Cannibal Gorge in the upper Maruia is said to have been traversed by raiding parties but its legends are as misty as its waterfalls in the rainy season. The rivers would have abounded in eels and the bush in bird life, and there is little doubt that the route would have been a favourite one. The next valleys south are the Hurunui in Canterbury and the Taramakau in Westland, linked by the Harper Pass, 3,152 feet. This is as important to pakeha mountain history as Browning's Pass is to Maori legend. For it was over the Harper Pass that the white men first crossed the Main Divide. It was “discovered” in September 1857 by Edward Dobson and two others. Dobson was the Provincial Engineer for Canterbury. He must have learnt of the existence of this pass from the Maoris of Kaiapoi. Neither Dobson nor the next pakeha party to visit the pass crossed, it to the West Coast. That honour was left to young Leonard Harper, whose feat has been recorded by his son Arthur P. Harper, our veteran New Zealand mountaineer, now ninety years of age.* Mr Arthur P. Harper has died since the writing of this article. Leonard Harper, then twenty years old, and a Mr Locke left late in October 1857. On a visit to Kaiapoi with his father, then Bishop of Canterbury, he heard from the chief Tainui that ‘after the battle of Kaiapoi when Te Rauparaha had raided the South Island, certain Maoris had fled up the Hurunui River to the West Coast and settled there.’ Leonard persuaded Tainui to allow his son Ihaia and two other Maoris to guide him across the ranges, and promised not to publicise his trip. They towed their swags in an old canoe along the side of Lake Sumner, and left horses