Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/215

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Our New Zealand Cousins.
199

of Apollyon. The seamed and riven sides of the crumbling gorge assume the most ghastly hues. All the potent agencies of nature in her most wrathful mood, have seemingly been exerted here to produce a chaos of wild, weird desolation. It is a picture fit for a prophet's vision, laden with wrath and woe, and desolation.

It is, indeed, a vision of judgment. The memory of it haunts me yet. A solemn awe settles on our spirits. Words utterly fail to present a tithe of the terrific awesomeness of this amazing pass.

We cross the Kawarau by a massive iron bridge, slung on thick wire cables, let into the solid rock on either side. A column of splintered spray comes scatteringly down over the giddy height to the left. We shudder as we gaze back at the terrible view.

Surely, now we are coming into some more cheerful environment? But no! Nature presents herself in these wild solitudes in her most forbidding guise. The Hindoos would say that Kali, or Doorga, the goddess of wrath and desolation, was the presiding divinity here. Everything is baneful—malign.

See dangling on yonder line a row of gory mangled scalps—a ribbon of bloody flesh with a silver selvage? What is it? Nay, start not! These are only a few hundred gory rabbit-skins drying for market. They are quite in keeping with the scenery.

A few farmsteads are scattered over this desolate