32

our exit on the opposite side, and were also foiled in the attempt to follow the course to the Awatere. It is a narrow watercourse, where the light of the sun has never penetrated, so narrow that standing within it we could at all times touch the walls on either hand, and we could hardly find room to pass between them, as they rose perpendicularly to the height of 100 feet, in many places scarcely leaving a slight strip of blue sky visible through the overhanging branches above them.

Our second day's journey, a distance of two miles, lay over comparatively open country. We avoided the hilly travelling here spoken of by Captain Impey, by keeping the downs of the east bank of the Awatere. About five miles from our camp we passed a small mountain stream ("the Hodder") rising down from an inland summit of the Kaikora range ("Mount Gladstone"); as we proceeded the country still improved, and at midday we found ourselves in the midst of one of the finest tracts of grazing land that is to be found in this or any other country. The Awatere here takes a sudden turn S.W. or S.S.W., and for the six miles on either side of it these downs rising on the east to the Kaikora range, and on the west to that which separates the Awatere from the Waiopai, over which there is here an old native route; the pass, though high, did not look impracticable for stock, and I regretted that time did not allow me to ascend it. The Isis here enters the Awatere, and I noticed the cascade also mentioned by Captain Impey, and which may fitly bear the name of the discoverer, who, a visitor to the colony, has devoted time and labour to its benefit, by exploring under all the disadvantages arising from the lateness and inclemency of the season. Several other streams fall into the river and water "Fairfield Downs," a name that this tract of country deserves from the beauty of its scenery, and its natural advantages of wood, water, and luxuriant herbage. I wish that the difficulty of carriage for supplies and produce did not go far to neutralize these advantages. Proceeding onwards our next step was rather a false one. We followed the course of the river which here winds among the spurs forming the inland base of the Kaikoras. After remarking an earthquake crack some thirty feet broad and sixty feet deep on a narrow neck of land, we camped for the night within five miles of the foot of their highest peaks, in a spot that is, strange to come, from the wild sublimity of its scenery, may become the Chamouni of New Zealand. Next morning we toiled painfully along the river course, crossing it more than knee-deep twenty seven times in a distance of some half dozen miles, as it wound with endless snake-like twists and windings amongst volcanic rocks and cliffs, presenting at every turn the most romantic scenery, which I must say we very ill appreciated. On emerging into more open country I found that all this might have been avoided—the proper route is after crossing the Awatere at any flat ford, to see where it turns to the south to leave it; and following a kind of opening in the hills, to travel about W. by S. for about three miles, when having crossed a brook you will find on your left a sack of land connecting the Awatere and Wairau, then the path goes into the mountains. You ascend it, and then bear S. by W., heading several small creeks that take their rise in the uplands that you are on; eight or ten miles from the ford at Fairfield will thus bring you to a considerable stream running to the Awatere from a high dark castellated mass of crags; follow this stream to the Awatere and you will avoid all the bad travelling and again find yourself in open country, and be rejoiced as we were to see the river (now diminished in size) after passing some remarkable needle docks, flowing in a direct course through a narrow plain some five miles long by an even breadth

of about half a mile. Small rounded hills with bare rocks piercing through their grassy sward are ranged on either side as regularly as if placed there by a surveyor; and such is the artificial and street-like appearance of the place, that I could hardly divest myself of the idea that I was looking up a long vista of some grass-grown remains of Cyclopean architecture. The view is closed by a conical peak, and at its base the river divides into two branches, one of which takes its source in the Kaikoras, whilst another (along which the route lies) down from the S.W. Near their junction, conspicuous amongst the array of fantastically shaped rocks, a steeple of solid stone rises from the plain to a height of about fifty feet. It stands just in advance of some bare hills, and grass land on either side of the river Middlehurst Downs. The valley itself (as Captain Impey had remarked before me) seems central between the Kaikoras and the inland ranges of Mongatere. It is well grassed, and I have no doubt, like all the country I had hitherto passed over, would be admirably adapted for fattening stock. The mountains of the Kaikora ranges lying to our left, I may here remark, all bore evident traces of volcanic action; and among their lower ranges, on ground covered with yellow or reddish dust glittering with mica, quartz, and feldspar, or again presenting the appearance of a deserted brick-field, grew the greenest and most luxuriant vegetation; whilst their scorious and basaltic rocks were dark colored, and rose in every describable and indescribable form of dome and spire and minaret. The inland ranges on our right were more rounded and massive in form, and generally presented bare summits covered with small broken pieces of freestone like a Macadamized road; the vegetation at their bases though good was less luxuriant. Though the course of the river may be to follow the whole way, I diverged to the right at the confluence of a small stream about a mile and a half before I reached the Steeple; and avoiding the obtuse angle formed by the river's course, I walked over downs for about two miles in a south-west direction, and encamped for the night on a breach of the Awatere, which here rising in a high bare-topped mountain, flows down to join that river.

Crossing over a ridge of table land on the morning of the 24th, I again came upon the Awatere and found it still flowing through level land about eight miles however brought us to a gorge by some low rounded hills, and here the valley again began to change its character, being narrower, and occasionally somewhat swampy. As we proceeded we noticed evident signs of the altitude above the sea level to which we had attained; even yesterday we had remarked little or no wood but gigantic "wild Irishmen" here as large as hawthorns, and some black birch at the foot of Mongatere, by the source of that branch of the Awatere on which we camped. We felt too bore signs, in its light puffy appearance, of having frequently been covered with snow, and now the land was poorer, and the vegetation, though still good, more tufty. For the first time in New Zealand I remarked "rushes" which, and the far-spread desolation of the common English sort; the dwarf nettle too had this morning reminded us of a change of climate, though neither of us were sufficiently devoted to the cause of science to try whether it was the stinging or the blind nettle; its flower rather resembled the latter. Following main branch of the valley we here lost all signs of Captain Impey's horsetracks which we had before occasionally seen. We were now evidently approaching a pass, if pass there were; the Awatere, now a rivulet, received a rill from every gully, whilst the mountains from Mongatere on the west to the Kaikora ranges on the east, seemed gradually to sweep round and hem us in. Before us,