Читать книгу The Long White Cloud: "Ao Tea Roa" - William Pember Reeves - Страница 7

ON A RIVER—"PAPA" COUNTRY Photo by A. MARTIN, Wanganui.

Of forest rivers, the Wanganui is the longest and most famous, perhaps the most beautiful. Near the sea it is simply a broad river, traversed by boats and small steamers, and with grassy banks dotted with weeping willows or clothed with flax and the palm-lily. But as you ascend it the hills close in. Their sides become tall cliffs, whose feet the water washes. From the tops of these precipices the forest, growing denser and richer at every turn, rises on the flanks of the hills. In places the cliffs are so steep and impracticable that the Maoris use ladders for descending on their villages above to their canoes in the rivers below. Lovely indeed are these cliffs; first, because of the profusion of fern frond, leaf, and moss, growing from everything that can climb to, lay hold of, or root itself in crack, crevice, or ledge, and droop, glistening with spray-drops, or wave whispering in the wind; next, because of the striking form and colour of the cliffs themselves. They are formed of what is called "Papa." This is a blue, calcareous clay often found with limestone, which it somewhat resembles. The Maori word "papa" is applied to any broad, smooth, flattish surface, as a door, or to a slab of rock. The smooth, slab-like, papa cliffs are often curiously marked—tongued and grooved, as with a gouge, channelled and fluted. Sometimes horizontal lines seem to divide them into strata. Again, the lines may be winding and spiral, so that on looking at certain cliffs it might be thought possible that the Maoris had got from them some of their curious tattoo patterns. Though pale and delicate, the tints of the rock are not their least beauty. Grey, yellow, brown, fawn, terra-cotta, even pale orange are to be noted. No photograph can give the charm of the drapery that clothes these cliffs. Photographs give no light or colour, and New Zealand scenery without light and colour is Hamlet with Hamlet left out. How could a photograph even hint at the dark, glossy green of the glistening karaka leaves, the feathery, waving foliage of the lace bark, or the white and purple bloom of the koromiko? How could black-and-white suggest the play of shade and shine when, between flying clouds, the glint of sunlight falls upon the sword-bayonet blades of the flax, and the golden, tossing plumes of the toe-toe, the New Zealand cousin of the Pampas grass? Add to this, that more often than the passenger can count as he goes along the river, either some little rill comes dripping over the cliff, scattering the sparkling drops on moss and foliage, or the cliffs are cleft and, as from a rent in the earth, some tributary stream gushes out of a dark, leafy tunnel of branches. Sometimes, too, the cliffs are not cleft, but the stream rushes from their summit, a white waterfall veiling the mossy rocks. Then there are the birds. In mid-air is to be seen the little fan-tail, aptly named, zig-zagging to and fro. The dark blue tui, called parson bird, from certain throat-feathers like white bands, will sing with a note that out-rivals any blackbird. The kuku, or wild pigeon, will show his purple, copper-coloured, white and green plumage as he sails slowly by, with that easy, confiding flight that makes him the cheap victim of the tyro sportsman. The grey duck, less easy to approach, rises noisily before boat or canoe comes within gunshot. The olive and brown, hoarse-voiced ka-ka, a large, wild parrot, and green, crimson-headed parakeets, may swell the list. Such is a "papa" river! and there are many such.

Features for which the traveller in New Zealand should be prepared are the far-reaching prospects over which the eye can travel, the sight and sound of rapid water, and the glimpses of snow high overhead, or far off—glimpses to be caught in almost every landscape in the South Island and in many of the most beautiful of the North. Through the sunny, lucid atmosphere it is no uncommon thing to see mountain peaks sixty and eighty miles away diminished in size by distance, but with their outlines clearly cut. From great heights you may see much longer distances, especially on very early mornings of still midsummer days. Then, before the air is heated or troubled or tainted, but when night seems to have cooled and purged it from all impurity, far-off ridges and summits stand out clean, sharp and vivid. On such mornings, though standing low down by the sea-shore, I have seen the hills of Bank's Peninsula between sixty and seventy miles off, albeit they are not great mountains. Often did they seem to rise purple-coloured from the sea, wearing "the likeness of a clump of peaked isles," as Shelley says of the Euganean hills seen from Venice. On such a morning from a hill looking northward over league after league of rolling virgin forest I have seen the great volcano, Mount Ruapehu, rear up his 9,000 feet, seeming a solitary mass, the upper part distinctly seen, blue and snow-capped, the lower bathed and half-lost in a pearl-coloured haze. Most impressive of all is it to catch sight, through a cleft in the forest, of the peak of Mount Egmont, and of the flanks of the almost perfect cone curving upward from the sea-shore for 8,300 feet. The sentinel volcano stands alone. Sunrise is the moment to see him when his summit, sheeted with snow, is tinged with the crimson of morning and touched by clouds streaming past in the wind. Lucky is the eye that thus beholds Egmont, for he is a cloud-gatherer who does not show his face every day or to every gazer. Almost as fine a spectacle is the sight of the "Kaikouras," or "Lookers-on." When seen from the deck of a coasting steamer they seem almost to hang over the sea heaving more than 8,000 feet below their summits. Strangely beautiful are these mighty ridges when the moonlight bathes them and turns the sea beneath to silver. But more, beautiful are they still in the calm and glow of early morning, white down to the waist, brown to the feet with the sunshine full on their faces, the blue sky overhead, and the bluer sea below.

If the Southern Alps surpass the Kaikouras in beauty it is because of the contrast they show on their western flanks, between gaunt grandeur aloft, and the softest luxuriance below. The forest climbs to the snow line, while the snow line descends as if to meet it. So abrupt is the descent that the transition is like the change in a theatre-scene. Especially striking is the transformation in the passage over the fine pass which leads through the dividing range between pastoral Canterbury and Westland. At the top of Arthur's Pass you are among the high Alps. The road winds over huge boulders covered with lichen, or half hidden by koromiko, ferns, green moss, and stunted beeches, grey-bearded and wind-beaten. Here and there among the stones are spread the large, smooth, oval leaves and white gold-bearing cups of the shepherd's lily. The glaciers, snowfields, and cliffs of Mount Rolleston lie on the left. Everything drips with icy water. Suddenly the saddle is passed and the road plunges down into a deep gulf. It is the Otira Gorge. Nothing elsewhere is very like it. The coach zig-zags down at a gentle pace, like a great bird slowly wheeling downwards to settle on the earth. In a few minutes it passes from an Alpine desert to the richness of the tropics. At the bottom of the gorge is the river foaming among scarlet boulders—scarlet because of the lichen which coats them. On either side rise slopes which are sometimes almost, sometimes altogether precipices, covered, every inch of them, with thick vegetation. High above these tower the bare crags and peaks which, as the eye gazes upwards, seem to bend inwards, as though a single shock of earthquake would make them meet and entomb the gorge beneath. In autumn the steeps are gay with crimson cushion-like masses of rata flowers, or the white blooms of the ribbon-wood and koromiko. Again and again waterfalls break through their leafy coverts; one falls on the road itself and sprinkles passengers with its spray. In the throat of the gorge the coach rattles over two bridges thrown from cliff to cliff over the pale-green torrent.

In an hour comes the stage where lofty trees succeed giant mountains. As the first grow higher the second diminish. This is the land of ferns and mosses. The air feels soft, slightly damp, and smells of moist leaves. It is as different to the sharp dry air of the Canterbury ranges as velvet is to canvas; it soothes, and in hot weather relaxes. The black birch with dark trunk, spreading branches, and light leaves, is now mingled with the queenly rimu, and the stiff, small-leaved, formal white pine. Winding and hanging plants festoon everything, and everything is bearded with long streamers of moss, not grey but rich green and golden. Always some river rushes along in sight or fills the ear with its noise. Tree ferns begin to appear and grow taller and taller as the coach descends towards the sea, where in the evening the long journey ends.

On the western coast glaciers come down to within 700 feet of the sea-level. Even on the east side the snow is some 2,000 feet lower than in Switzerland. This means that the climber can easily reach the realm where life is not, where ice and snow, rock and water reign, and man feels his littleness.

Though Aorangi has been ascended to the topmost of its 12,349 feet, still in the Southern Alps the peaks are many which are yet unsealed, and the valleys many which are virtually untrodden. Exploring parties still go out and find new lakes, new passes, and new waterfalls. It is but a few years since the Sutherland Falls, 2,000 feet high, were first revealed to civilized man, nor was there ever a region better worth searching than the Southern Alps. Every freshly-found nook and corner adds beauties and interests. Falls, glaciers and lakes are on a grand scale. The Tasman glacier is eighteen miles long and more than two miles across at the widest point; the Murchison glacier is more than ten miles long; the Godley eight. The Hochstetter Fall is a curtain of broken, uneven, fantastic ice coming down 4,000 feet on to the Tasman glacier. It is a great spectacle, seen amid the stillness of the high Alps, broken only by the occasional boom and crash of a falling pinnacle of ice.

Of the many mountain lakes Te Anau is the largest, Manapouri the loveliest. Wakatipu is fifty-four miles long, and though its surface is 1,000 feet above the sea-level, its profound depth sinks below it. On the sea side of the mountains the fiords rival the lakes in depth. Milford Sound is 1,100 feet deep near its innermost end.

But enough of the scenery of the Colony. This is to be a story, not a sketch-book. Enough that the drama of New Zealand's history, now in the second act, has been placed on one of the most remarkable and favourable stages in the globe. Much—too much—of its wild and singular beauty must be ruined in the process of settlement. But very much is indestructible. The colonists are also awakening to the truth that mere Vandalism is as stupid as it is brutal. Societies are being established for the preservation of scenery. The Government has undertaken to protect the more famous spots. Within recent years three islands lying off different parts of the coast have been reserved as asylums for native birds. Two years ago, too, the wild and virgin mountains of the Urewera tribe were by Act of Parliament made inalienable, so that, so long as the tribe lasts, their ferns, their birds and their trees shall not vanish from the earth.