320 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
Good examples are Lakes Wakatipu, Manapouri, Te Anau, and 
Monowai. The famous fiords of the same part of South Island 
occupy deep, steep-sided valleys whose lower reaches during the 
Ice Age were gouged far below sea-level, thus permitting arms 
of the ocean to enter for some distance into these deep narrow 
embayments. So abundant and picturesque are the fiords of the 
region that the place is spoken of as Fiordland, and its rugged 
scenery vies in grandeur with that of the fiord coasts of Norway 
or Alaska. Milford Sound is one of the best examples. It is 
fully one thousand feet deep and its walls are sheer precipices 
two or three thousand feet high. Into these sounds leap water- 
falls plunging several hundred feet from the mouths of hanging 
valleys on the sides. Waterfalls of other origin occur in the 
region among which may be mentioned Sutherland Falls, near 
Lake Ada, whose waters drop a distance of 1,904 feet, making 
it one of the highest in the world. 
THE BULLER GORGE 
At Nelson we boarded a twelve-passenger Cadillae for West- 
port, nearly one hundred and fifty miles away. This all-day 
drive through winding valleys set in primeval forests and 
flanked by bold hills and farther back by snow-capped moun- 
tains is one of the finest imaginable. For many miles there is a 
steady climb past the Nelson orchards and through sheep runs. 
The roadbed is well kept but is narrow; in places there are 
sharp hair-pin turns with a drop of hundreds of feet on the 
outside of the curve; in others there are great cuttings through 
coarse boulder ridges and edges of terraces in which the un- 
usually coarse gravel and boulders tell of the powerful currents 
of the glacial and post-glacial streams. In places valley walls 
rise to two thousand feet at a slope of eighty degrees, but half 
this height and a slope of thirty to fifty degrees is more nearly 
the average. Frequent bridges over turbulent tributaries, im- 
mense overhanging rock masses, shelves cut into the living rock 
just wide enough for a narrow road bed, and the deep forest, 
here and there scarred by a swath-cutting landslide, contribute 
thrills and variety to this remarkable forest road. This is the 
gorge of the Buller river, an antecedent stream which has cut 
its remarkable canyon through recently uplifted mountain 
blocks. Between the blocks there are miles of flatter land where 
the valley widens and where man has made small settlements. 
