won, and not otherwise! We risked our lives in drinking a hot concoction erroneously called tea and eating strange confections in the dining-room under the tottery stand. Mrs Greendays made sketches on her programme of some of the wonderful and truly ingenious raiment, while I snapshotted some of the heads, for even more marvellous than the clothes were the coiffures and the hats perched above them; and we laughed so much that for antidote Captain Greendays insisted on taking us to see a melodrama performed by a travelling Australian company in the evening. And, as might have been predicted, there was so much melo about the drama that the performance very nearly proved the finishing stroke for us all, so that we returned to the hotel in a state of collapse, praying that nothing funny would happen for at least a week.
When we consulted the landlord of our hotel about the excursions he told us that the special beauties of Lake Mahinapua, its power of reflection, depended very much upon the wind, whereas it made very little difference to Lake Kanieri, as long as it was fine, so we decided to make no plans but be guided entirely by the weather conditions. And next morning he sent us a message that the day was perfect for Mahinapua, and that the oil launch would leave at nine o’clock in order to catch the tide.
As we came out of the hotel a wonderful vista arrested us. Boldly outlined against a vividly blue sky rose Aorangi, the “Cloud in the Heavens,” (called by the Goths who presumed to improve on the Maori names, Mount Cook!). Its snowy peaks were dazzling in the sunshine; its base was hidden by slate-blue hills; and between the hills and the wide expanse of water that lay at the end of the street in which we stood there was dark green forest, massed in sombre irregularity against an azure background.
It was the nearest view we were to have of the lordly mountain, and Mrs Greendays would not go down to the boat until she had made one of her “snapshot sketches,” in case the sky again clouded over before she had another chance.
Once in the launch we had first to cross a tricky bit of “River-mouth,” full of sand-banks and snags, the channels not always easy to find, and past a bridge across the Hokitika river,—an immensely long bridge of wood with steel girders on “iron-bark” piles brought from the Clarence River, Queensland, at a cost of £12 apiece.*
After successfully negotiating the channels we went up the creek leading to the lake, a lovely creek, fringed with bush, and with flax, tree-fern, and clumps of pampas grass growing in and on the edge of the water. Rugged ratas flung their misshapen branches out against the sky to be reflected in the water as in a mirror, and their scarlet flowers made grateful dashes of colour in the gloomy setting of the forest picture. The reflections were absolutely marvellous; not only was the smallest detail of fern-frond or flax-flower faithfully reproduced, but trees a long way back that one would have imagined quite beyond
*The entire cost of the bridge was £32,000, the length 44½ chains.
