A MOUNTAIN VALLEY 69 



Zealand, but a mass of them covering a steep bank 

 beside a mountain stream is a very beautiful sight. 

 Where there were so many flowers, and so great 

 a variety of them, one would naturally expect to 

 find a great number of butterflies, but they were 

 disappointingly few, and most of them were sombre 

 and inconspicuous ; however, they atoned somewhat 

 by their rarity for their lack of beauty. 



It has been remarked above that the view of the 

 upper valley above Bihunga was cut off by the 

 ridge on which the camp was set. From the sum- 

 mit of this ridge a new world was seen unfolded. 

 The valley, which had become narrowed by the 

 Bihunga ridge, widened again into a broad basin 

 filled with forest and intersected by small subsidiary 

 spurs that sloped down from the greater heights 

 above. Through the middle of the forest the white 

 streak of the Mubuku, hundreds of feet below, 

 could be seen and heard roaring through its rocky 

 bed, and across the valley the huge mass of Portal 

 Peaks towered to 1 2,000 feet and more. Over the 

 head of the valley rose ridge after ridge of forest 

 and rocky peaks, and in the farthest distance could 

 be seen a glistening slope of snow. It may, 

 perhaps, be objected that I insist too much upon 

 the views from one place or another. In a country 

 where the greater part of one's time is spent 

 dawdling along narrow tracks hedged in by walls 

 of grass and bushes, whence nothing can be seen 

 but the back of the man in front of you, or groping 



