SOCIAL LIFE, SPORTS, AND RECREATIONS 259 



uplands of Canterbury in the South Island of New 

 Zealand, close by the Southern Alps, and in the still 

 bleaker uplands of Otago, by Lakes Wakatipu and 

 Wanaka, the exhilarating sport of skating could be 

 pursued. Even in Canada there is no better skating, 

 Lady Barker beUeved, than among the Malvern Hills, 

 where, in remote and black mountain-tarns, on the 

 borders of the glaciers, ice several feet thick lies all 

 winter. There, on lakes far inland, bullock teams could 

 travel in safety. To such lakes the squatting party 

 would ride by two or three stages. First, they would 

 ride for thirty miles to a neighbouring station. Facing 

 the majestic chain of the Alps, they would pass through 

 long, Avinding valleys and steep gullies, or, later, through 

 bleak, desolate valleys, round the shoulder of projecting 

 spurs, through swamps, and up and down rockj^ stair- 

 cases. Spending the night there, they would set out 

 next morning on a rough road, through desolate 

 gorges, in scenes of desolate grandeur, and amid a 

 silence that seemed awful, and after two hours' difficult 

 riding, they would arrive at their skating ground — a 

 gloomj^ tarn, Avhere two mountains rose sheer from 

 the water's edge, and a dark pine forest loomed before 

 them. Situated in " the cleft of a huge, gaunt, bare 

 hill," lay a sheet of black, thick ice. There, for three 

 successive days, they skated amid an "intense, appalhng 

 loneliness." * 



More exotic sports are open to the squatter's family 

 in certain colonies. Once in twelve or fourteen years, 

 in the far inland parts of Canterbury, the Canadian recrea- 

 tion of tobogganing may be enjoyed. Then, after a 

 week's incessant snowfall, the foothills of the Southern 

 Alps — themselves an amphitheatre of snow-covered 

 mountains stretching for a hundred miles from north to 

 south and standing out a vision of Avhite as appalling as 

 rare — are covered with snow. A smooth slope down 

 one of them at an angle of 40 furnished a course for a 

 * Barker, Station Amusemenfa in Neio Zealand, ch. iv. 



