stream, but in many other places it was a torrent fighting its way over large boulders. So, too, was Mackay's Creek, which flowed near it. Born in the Terror Peaks, this stream furnished one of the wildest scenes in all this untamed granite land. Boulders formed its bed, the bridge spanning it rested upon an enormous one, and from its source to its mouth it was a succession of falls and rapids. Mackay Falls, its most beautiful cataract, plunged from a bower of trees, ferns, and moss and made one of the superior pictures of Fiordland. Another fine cataract fed by glacial streams from the Terror Peaks was the Giant's Gate Fall, which dropped about two hundred feet into a pool of marvelous blue.
A short distance west of Arthur Ferry I skirted shadowy Lake Ada, through which the Arthur River flows on its way to the sound. Whether viewed from boat or from apex of the track cut from the rocky bluffs high above the lake, this mirror of the mountains reflected wonderful shadows of peak, cliff, cloud, and forest. In it I glimpsed the Sheerdowns, which raise a lofty wall along its eastern shore; the jagged form of the Terror Peaks; and the Devil's Armchair, "a sharp and frosty throne perched high in cloudland and cushioned with the never-melting snows." All the lake's lone, uninhabited shores were darkened by the beech, and high up the surrounding mountains its small leaves formed an unbroken evergreen mass.
Two miles beyond the northern boat landing of Lake Ada the track ended at a sign reading: "Closed season
