When spring comes there is a change, but only doubtfully for the better. The biting blasts give place to the warmer winds from the north west. These come over the Tasman Sea, getting charged with moisture on the way, until they strike the rampart of alpine peaks and pour their burden on the snow. At night the scene is weirdly grand. The lightning plays among the rocky crests, darting fiery fingers again and again down into the valleys. A veritable cannonade of thunder shakes the mountain slopes, while sleet and hail sweep ruthlessly everywhere. Soon every crevice in the mountain side sends forth a torrent; the creeks become rushing rivers; and the river itself awakes to fury, losing its winter gentleness for a violence indescribable. Swollen from bank to bank, it becomes a seething, whirling, irresistible flood. It gouges out the bases of the cliffs and sweeps away the fords, while the roar of its water and the growl of its crunching boulders can be heard miles away. Heavily laden with yellow silt, it rushes out over the plains and discolours the sea for seventy miles out from the coast. The coming of these spring winds effects a devastating transformation, well described in the following stanzas from “The Nor’-Wester,” by the late Mrs. F. M. Renner, née Craig:–
Then I spring up the slopes of the Alps, but recoil at the touch of their snow,
And wrap myself round in cloud; and my angry eyes, aglow,
Shoot forth the zig-zag lightning; my thunder shakes the air,
And I scatter the great drops thick and fast from off my sea-wet hair.
But never a whit can the Alps stop me,
I leave them soon behind,
And revel and dance in maddest glee,
A riotous Nor’-West wind!
My warm breath frees the waters, and makes the snow flowers die,
And the sides of the Alps are torn as the torrents hurry by;
There’s a fresh in the Waimakariri, a flood in the turbid Grey;
Each swollen river is rushing, o’erwhelming all in its way.
And this is my work that none can withstand,
Nor any power can bind;
And I dance and revel throughout the land,
A riotous Nor’-West wind!
During midsummer and autumn only are these vast alpine tracts at all comfortably accessible.
This band of alpine country forms the back-bone of the
