“We’ll gallop o’er yon mountains,
And roa-m o’er yon plains,
And scorn to die in slave-ry,
Bound down in i-ron chains.”
It was a song, with endless verses, of the old bush-ranging days in Australia. The exploits of the gang were belauded, and they themselves were made out to be great heroes, whereas, as a matter of law and justice, they should all have been hanged! However, this perversion of sentiment did not detract from the merits of the song as a song, and so we all vigorously demanded an encore, which was promptly given.
Someone says that there is a certain pain always in doing anything for the last time, and certainly as we said “Good-night” on this our last day in the Clinton Valley, most of us must have wished ourselves able to put Time’s dial-hand back. The merry evening in that hut will be among our many pleasant memories of the trip—a trip in which one and all worked heartily, often in the face of impediments and dangers, from the beginning to the end. Fyfe and Kenneth had laboured under difficulties, the former suffering terribly from neuralgia, and the latter having, from the second day out, a heel on which there was a section of raw flesh the size of a two-shilling piece. How he managed to climb at all under such circumstances was often a puzzle to me. Hodgkins, who was comparatively new to such rough work, did remarkably well; while the good-natured Ziele was invaluable in camp. My brother John surprised us with the cool manner in which he threw another man’s camera in addition to his own heavy swag over his shoulders, lit his pipe, and strolled without apparent effort, smoking all the time, to the top of the pass; and last, but not least, my wife was all times, I think, the cheeriest and the pluckiest of the party.
Next morning there was a big flood in the Clinton, and the river had overflowed its bounds to such an extent that it was no easy matter getting to the steamer. The men waded out with the swags and cameras and afterwards pushed a boat up the edge of the stream for my wife and me. Into this we got, and once fairly out in the current we were shot down like a cork into the quieter and safer waters of the lake.
And now shall I attempt to describe our sail down the wonderful lake? I am afraid I can do it but scant justice. There was no gale to vex the waters through which our little craft cut her way. The rain had ceased, and the heavy pall of ashen grey was slowly but surely resolving itself into noble piles of cumuli. Peak after peak came out, here black with overhanging precipice, yonder, where less steep, snow-flecked. And ever and anon the cloud masses that were slowly rent asunder would, more slowly still, with ever-varying change, heal themselves up again and softly drape the beetling crags. Now a peak would be hidden completely; then the clouds would break, revealing with startling suddenness some rocky pinnacle high in heaven. Farther down the sun came out, and the mists formed themselves in bands athwart the lower hills. The high mountains at the head of the lake slowly recede. On our right a purple cone flecked with new snow rises above the mists and then is cloaked as with a thick veil. A black promontory, with tree-serrated edge, clear cut against a bank of sunlit mist, juts out ahead. Mists and high snow-capped mountains on the right, trees and the low land on the left; away up the North Fiord a patch of blue sky; and southward gleams of green. Below us the dark waters of the great lake; and yonder, on Lone Island, standing out against the sombre trees, left by some long-melted glacier, a granite obelisk—MacKinnon’s monument. Our journey is coming to an end, and in the gloom of this restful autumn evening a feeling in which there is a tinge of sadness steals over those of us who are such barbarians as to enjoy a taste of the nomad’s existence. And ever I find my thoughts recurring to the fate of the lost explorers of Fiordland—Mainwaring Brown, William Quill, and Quintin MacKinnon. Widely different in temperament, in character, and in education, each had the same love of undefiled nature, and each had felt the fascinating spell of the great unexplored mountain region.
“Gone to Lake Gertrude Saddle, and trying to get down to Cleddau Valley.—Will Quill, 15/1/91, 7 a.m.” Thus ran the last words of Quill’s diary, written on a paper bag and left in the tent at the foot of Homer’s Pass. In endeavouring to find a way to Milford he probably slipped and fell over a precipice. Mainwaring Brown perished, no one knows how, in endeavouring to find a pass from Manapouri to Hall’s Arm; and poor MacKinnon, who had gone through many adventures by flood and field, was no doubt knocked off his boat by the boom in some sudden squall, and drowned in the lake. Brave fellows all of them. Of the manner of their going hence we know little, but of this we may be sure, that when the time came for them to leave for that other country,