On the western coast glaciers come down to within 700 feet of the sea-level.  Even on the east side the snow is some 2,000 feet lower than in Switzerland.  This means that the climber can easily reach the realm where life is not, where ice and snow, rock and water reign, and man feels his littleness.

Though Aorangi has been ascended to the topmost of its 12,349 feet, still in the Southern Alps the peaks are many which are yet unsealed, and the valleys many which are virtually untrodden.  Exploring parties still go out and find new lakes, new passes, and new waterfalls.  It is but a few years since the Sutherland Falls, 2,000 feet high, were first revealed to civilized man, nor was there ever a region better worth searching than the Southern Alps.  Every freshly-found nook and corner adds beauties and interests.  Falls, glaciers and lakes are on a grand scale.  The Tasman glacier is eighteen miles long and more than two miles across at the widest point; the Murchison glacier is more than ten miles long; the Godley eight.  The Hochstetter Fall is a curtain of broken, uneven, fantastic ice coming down 4,000 feet on to the Tasman glacier.  It is a great spectacle, seen amid the stillness of the high Alps, broken only by the occasional boom and crash of a falling pinnacle of ice.

Of the many mountain lakes Te Anau is the largest, Manapouri the loveliest.  Wakatipu is fifty-four miles long, and though its surface is 1,000 feet above the sea-level, its profound depth sinks below it.  On the sea side of the mountains the fiords rival the lakes in depth.  Milford Sound is 1,100 feet deep near its innermost end.

But enough of the scenery of the Colony.  This is to be a story, not a sketch-book.  Enough that the drama of New Zealand’s history, now in the second act, has been placed on one of the most remarkable and favourable stages in the globe.  Much—­too much—­of its wild and singular beauty must be ruined in the process of settlement.  But very much is indestructible.  The colonists are also awakening to the truth that mere Vandalism is as stupid as it is brutal.  Societies are being established for the preservation of scenery.  The Government has undertaken to protect the more famous spots.  Within recent years three islands lying off different parts of the coast have been reserved as asylums for native birds.  Two years ago, too, the wild and virgin mountains of the Urewera tribe were by Act of Parliament made inalienable, so that, so long as the tribe lasts, their ferns, their birds and their trees shall not vanish from the earth.

Chapter II

THE MAORI

  “The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
  Moves on.  Nor all your piety or wit
  Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
  Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.”