To-day all was calm, but the Waiho in its short course of thirteen miles can be cruel and terrible, and only lately a man was drowned as he tried to cross it. Lying in the river-bed are the gaunt bleached corpses of forest-trees, a few all the way and very many at the mouth, where they lie thickly along the shore; these trees had their roots undermined by the Waiho in flood-time, and when the flood went down the trees fell and died—they were the one sad sight of an otherwise perfect morning.
After rounding a steep bush-clad bluff, we came out on the shore of the Tasman Sea, a quiet grey and blue sea, with the tide coming in, and great white curling breakers dashing against the beach—those mighty breakers which are ever rolling on the Pacific coasts—we cantered through the surf on firm grey sand, the spray flying round us as we rode. Ever in the distance, against the blue, rose the snowy peaks, whose loveliness compelled us to look again and yet again, until it was a relief to rest the eyes on the grey sameness of the sand.
Forty years ago this beach was thronged with miners seeking gold; now not one lives here, and there is very little gold left, though we did come across three "beach combers," who were washing sand in wooden troughs, in the hope of finding a deposit of gold at the bottom.
SOUTHERN ALPS FROM MOUTH OF WAIHO RIVER.
To face page 164.
The bluffs, which here run down to the sea, are ancient glacial moraines—high-piled heaps of boulders and loose soil, covered now with wind-swept tea-tree bushes, tall forest trees and crimson rata vine, and between the headlands, where once the glaciers flowed, are peaceful lagoons bordered with flax plants and rushes.
At low tide you may skirt the bluffs on the sand between sea and cliff, but sometimes you must ride over them—up a steep track through scrub and forest, where a horse accustomed to the beach will carry you safely; and from his back, you look down through tall brown trunks on the blue sea far below.