THE KEA COUNTRY. 19 



Here and there great shingle slides come down the 

 mountain slopes, long streams of broken boulders that creep 

 into the gorge and spread fan-like for a mile or so across 

 its broken expanse. In places the river has shorn them off 

 clean ; and their massive walls, often a hundred feet in 

 height, bound the river's torrent. 



A night was spent at Lake Coleridge Homestead ; and 

 then, with my outfit transferred from cycle to horse, I 

 skirted the lake, its wild water-fowl rising in clouds at my 

 approach. About midday I reached the top of the pass. 



At last ! There before me it lay, — the lonely, solemn, 

 weird but fascinating country the Kea chooses for a home. 

 Not a sound broke the great silence as I reined up and 

 gazed across the apparently endless succession of snow-clad 

 peaks. My coming seemed an intrusion. Save for the 

 dray-track that wound easily down for a mile or so to the 

 river-bed, passing an empty galvanised-iron hut as it went, 

 there was no sign of man's presence in this vast wild. 

 Over this scene, looking then much as it does now, the giant 

 moas, whose remains have been found in the gorge, must 

 have strutted in search of food. 



Hundreds of feet below lie the Rakaia Forks, where the 

 Wilberforce, Mathias and Rakaia Rivers unite their forces 

 before they charge down the gorge on to the plains. Their 

 reinforcements are called from all the surrounding peaks. 

 They rush from the terminal faces of the glaciers ; they 

 trickle from the snow-line ; they ripple and bubble through 

 the cushion-like vegetation of the higher slopes. Down amid 

 the dense bush they tumble, forming numerous cascades 

 and waterfalls. Here they rattle under a fallen monarch of 

 the forest. There they slip and slide over the great boulders 

 that in vain stand to stem their progress. Down they 

 scramble, seething over the shingle of the river-bed, 

 sweeping round the hill slopes, hurrying to join the roaring 

 river. 



Where the gorge widens out the streams of the Rakaia 

 anastomose like silver network, with the tussocky flats filling 

 up the interval?. Farther away lie great swamps, where 



