Identifier: throughsouthwes00more (find matches)
Title: Through south Westland, a journey to the Haast and Mount Aspiring, New Zealand
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Moreland, A. Maud
Subjects: Westland, N.Z. (County)
Publisher: London Witherby
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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s fills The spaces of the dark. G. C. Whitney. The mist floating in the valley was very tantalizing,hiding so much I longed to see. The scene waschanging entirely. We were now riding up a wideriver-bed of grey sands and gravel; crossing andre-crossing, but never swimming. Then the gorgeopened into a wide valley, stretching away on ourleft, to high snow mountains, and unexploredpeaks and glaciers. The Lansborough river comesdown here, bringing the main body of water to theHaast; and it is said it was due to a mistake, thatthe small river entering it on the right was namedafter Sir Julius Von Haast. He was the first topenetrate through these mountains from sea tosea. It is getting a long time ago now, but Idont think the track can have changed muchsince the day when he and his men forced theirway through ! The Lansborough takes its rise in the SouthernAlps, where a net-work of glaciers feeds manysmall rivers, some of which find outlet towardsHunters river and Lake Hawea eastwards, while
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THE LAST STAGE. 115 others drain into the Lansborough valley. Ourcourse was up the smaller valley to the right.Before us lay a desolate broken bit of country,and here, without Ted, inevitably we should havebeen lost, for one might be three or four miles fromthe track without knowing. He never hesitated ;he and his mare pressed on, through the wild scruband shingle flats at the junction of the rivers,across water or dry land, and we followed confi-dently. There was, he told us, an old track alongthe hills, long since spoiled by landslips, and nowovergrown and impossible for horses—that musthave been where the surveyor got the biddies, Ithought. As we entered the Upper Haast the sun brokethrough completely. Looking back, we saw thesnow-fields of the Lansborough glittering againstthe glorious blue, with a dark mass of precipitousmountains at the junction of the valleys. Nolonger was the Haast a hungry, treacherous river.Here it was a lovely blue stream, widening inplaces to broad reach

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