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Wahlenbergia saxicola, and Gentiana saxosa (plate 24), were in great abundance, also some of the Veronicas, forming great masses of white and lilac.
It was now February; the season was too advanced, and most of the Spring flowers had disappeared; it was a great pity, but I had been detained both in Wellington and Nelson. I was anxious to hurry on so as not to lose those in Arthur's Pass. We drove again the twelve miles, and passed the burnt bridge a second time in safety, arriving at the little inn amongst the mountains, where we joined the coach. The view was most beautiful of the river winding down the valley many hundred feet below. The sides of the road were lined with Lomaria rulcanica, Aspidium vestitum, Hypolepis distans, Adiantums, and other ferns. There were long bunches of blackberries and glossy black mako-mako berries, which we saw all the way to Hokitika. We went all along the banks of the Buller River, losing it now and then and coming back to it, seeing some of the most beautiful scenery in New Zealand, and by a road not much travelled, unfortunately we passed some of the finest parts in the dark. The drivers of the coaches on this road are brothers. They are most careful, and it is very necessary that they should be so. Your heart is in your mouth most of the way. At one place in particular, the road is built outside the cliff, and supported on piles, which are inserted somehow into the rock. The cliff rises perpendicularly above you, and there is only just room for the coach to pass round without touching, and there is hardly an inch to spare on the outside edge which has no wall or fence. If one of the horses shied or fell, coach and all would go over into the river, which rushes along two hundred feet below, and we saw all this from a turn in the road before we came to it, which made it worse. I kept my face turned to the cliff, but my niece, who was with me and had a stronger head, kept calling my attention to the magnificent scenery. We both drew a long breath when it was over, and were truly thankful to be safely through; yet the coach goes every day with the same driver. The chief danger I believe, lies in some of the wooden piles becoming decayed, how the road was ever made is marvellous. We thought very little of the famous pass in the Otira Gorge after this, though this is considered very bad. We travelled some distance in the dark, and so I missed Senecio Hectori, but Mr. Buchanan kindly supplied me with it afterwards (plate 20).
We arrived about 9 p.m. at a small inn, and started at 6 a.m. next day through a cold mist from the river, which cleared away afterwards, and it became very hot. We were soon passing through country with gold-digging shafts, water-races, and other traces of mining. We crossed several rivers, sometimes bumping over the big boulders and struggling through the rushing water, others by ferry, and at one, the Teremakau, we left the coach and entered a kind of wooden box, hung on a rope, which was wound up by a small steam engine on the other side. We slid down one side and up the other. It was not an unpleasant but a very curious sensation to find oneself suspended from one to two hundred feet above a broad rapid river.
