But in New Zealand not only is the north in marked contrast with the south, but the contrast between the east and west is even more sharply defined.  As a rule the two coasts are divided by a broad belt of mountainous country.  The words “chain” and “spine” are misnomers, at any rate in the South Island, inasmuch as they are not sufficiently expressive of breadth.  The rain-bringing winds in New Zealand blow chiefly from the north-west and south-west.  The moisture-laden clouds rolling up from the ocean gather and condense against the western flanks of the mountains, where an abundant rainfall has nourished through ages past an unbroken and evergreen forest.  Nothing could well be more utterly different than these matted jungles of the wet west coast—­with their prevailing tint of rich dark green, their narrow, rank, moist valleys and steep mountain sides—­and the eastern scenery of the South Island.  The sounds or fiords of the south-west are perhaps the loveliest series of gulfs in the world.  Inlet succeeds inlet, deep, calm, and winding far in amongst the steep and towering mountains.  The lower slopes of these are clothed with a thick tangle of forest, where foliage is kept eternally fresh and vivid by rain and mist.  White torrents and waterfalls everywhere seam the verdure and break the stillness.

Cross to the east coast.

Scarcely is the watershed passed when the traveller begins to enter a new landscape and a distinct climate.  The mountains, stripped of their robe of forest, seem piled in ruined, wasting heaps, or stand out bleak and bare-ribbed,

  “The skeletons of Alps whose death began
  Far in the multitudinous centuries.”

Little is left them but a kind of dreary grandeur.  The sunshine falls on patches of gleaming snow and trailing mist, and lights up the grey crags which start out like mushrooms on the barren slopes.  On all sides streams tear down over beds of the loose shingle, of which they carry away thousands of tons winter after winter.  Their brawling is perhaps the only sound you will hear through slow-footed afternoons, save, always, the whistle or sighing of the persistent wind.  A stunted beech bush clothes the spurs here and there, growing short and thick as a fleece of dark wool.  After a storm the snow will lie powdering the green beech trees, making the rocks gleam frostily and sharpening the savage ridges till they look like the jagged edges of stone axes.  Only at nightfall in summer do the mountains take a softer aspect.  Then in the evening stillness the great outlines show majesty; then in the silence after sunset rivers, winding among the ranges in many branches over broad, stony beds, fill the shadowy valleys with their hoarse murmur.