AMONG THE SOUTHERN ALPS
My first experience of tourist travelling in New Zealand was a trip to the Southern Alps, with a stay among the mountains of only six days. It was a very short visit, but long enough for something of the fascination of the mountains to take hold of me and bring me back later for several months. From Christchurch the traveller sees, a hundred miles away, on the western side of the Canterbury Plain, the whole range of the Southern Alps, a wonderful rampart of snowy peaks; and it was with eager curiosity that I set out on the journey thither.
Not many years ago the mountains were almost inaccessible and it was necessary to ride the greater part of the way. Now a railway winds up among the southern foothills, and during seven months of the year an excellent service of motor cars runs regularly three days a week between Fairlie, the railroad terminus, and the mountain hostel, ninety-six miles further. Fairlie is a small township, with two hotels, Post Office, a bank and a few shops in its main street. Round about the township are grassy hills with many "cabbage trees," their bare brown stems surrounded by one or more tufts of narrow green streamers, which wave lightly in the breeze: the cabbage tree is a species of lily, and in the early summer has long panicles crowded with creamy white blossoms among the green leaves. It grows on hill, plain or swamp, and always on good soil.
Tourists spend the night at Fairlie, and start in the car next morning punctually at eight o'clock.
This district has all been taken up by settlers for farms and sheep runs. We drove past "paddocks," as all fields are called in New Zealand, white with English ox-eye daisies or dazzlingly yellow with great bushes of broom, and saw homesteads sheltered by clumps of oaks, poplars, willows or pines.
The road climbs steadily uphill to the top of Burke's Pass, more than two thousand feet above sea level, and for the rest of the way goes through "tussock" country, a land of hill and plain covered as far as eye could see with tufts of brown grass. On a rainy day such a landscape, stretching on interminably in one uniform tint of brown has a very desolate appearance, but when the sun shines the brown hills gleam yellow in the distance and develop beautiful purple shadows in their hollows, and big white clouds floating above them make purple shadows too: then, beyond the rounded hills stand blue mountains, rugged and mysterious, their summits streaked with snow. In the heart of the hills you come unexpectedly upon a lovely blue-green lake, six miles long, fed by glacier streams, a blue mountain torrent rushing out of it. Thirty miles further on we reached yet another lake—Lake Pukaki—twice the size of the first, and green rather than blue. Behind this lake, though still forty miles away, we saw Mount Cook, half hidden by clouds. Mount Cook, or as the Maoris called it, "Aorangi, the Sky Piercer," is 12,349 feet in height, the Monarch of the Southern Alps, and the loftiest mountain in New Zealand. The Maoris gave names to many of the high peaks in both islands, but knew them only from afar; they regarded them with reverent awe and had no wish to invade their solitudes. The honour of being the first to reach the summit of Mount Cook rests with three New Zealanders, who climbed it successfully on Christmas Day, 1894.
ROAD BETWEEN FAIRLIE AND THE HERMITAGE.
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