Wednesday.

Rose at daylight and struck tent; and also decided to leave gun, and heavy portion of swag so as to make the ascent of the Pass less laborious, for every pound in weight feels ten upon such grades. Also had the last meal of animal food, in this trip, at this place. Skirted the shores of Lake Montara, and found a camp site, with memo saying that R. Hay, F. King, and R. Henry were camped there three days by reason of wet weather. Took to bush immediately behind this camp, and started to rise over Saddle (or Pass). Being a warm day, it was very hard work, for the grade is in places about 1 in 2, and it was necessary to pull oneself up by means of the trees and scrub. This took longer than was expected, for ever so light a swag feels heavy on such grades and in such country, and the summit of the Saddle was not reached until about 2 p.m. And now for a slight description of the scenery en route, and from the view at the Pass: the Clinton Valley from its very commencement at Lake Te Anau is a combination of all that is beautiful in Alpine scenery while it presents many unusual features not page 8 known in other Alpine countries, and by no means frequent or common in New Zealand. The river winds about through a comparatively narrow valley, over a bed composed of boulders of unusual size, and between ranges of mountains whose peaks are from 4,000 to 8,000 feet in height, and which mountains are clad in evergreen forest (colonially called bush) up to the snow line, while from this line upwards the clothing is snow—in many cases perpetual. Waterfalls of many feet, snow-slips of large extent, and turbulent creeks and torrents are of course common, but which all add to the beauty of the landscape of this part of the "Wonderland of the World" as the Union Steamship Company calls it. The very track through the forest is of great beauty and charm to the naturalist and botanist, for it consists of many varieties of trees and shrub, including red and black birch, red, white, and black pine, totara, rata, &c.; while it abounds in ferns, among which the writer noticed the Todea superba, Todea hymenophylloides, Gleichena Cunninghami and dicarpa, Hymenophyllum scabrum, Trichomanes reniforme, Davallia Novæ Zealandiæ, Pteris scaberula, Lomaria Alpina, and Asplenium flabellifolium, among others; wild fowl are abundant, including grey, blue, and paradise ducks, grebe, wekas, kakapos, kiwis, teal, black swans, &c., while the lake and parts of the river abound in eels, some of which approach conger eels in sire. On and around the tracks there are several lakelets, grassy flats, and (by no means least to the pedestrian) hogs. It is noticeable that all the water about this district is very pellucid, except in flood time, and a very striking and pleasing feature with these lakelets is, that they seem coloured with different varieties of shades of colour,—one, for instance, being an emerald green, another deep blue (nearly purple), while others represent almost any degree of shade between these extremes. The scenery from the summit of the Pass is superbly grand and beautiful. On the one side the view is down the Clinton Valley with its evergreen clothing, snow-covered peaks and granite crags, while to the right (looking down the Clinton) is an amphitheatre of rocks, snow-slips, and avalanches, forming the head and end of the Clinton Valley. To the left the Pass is bounded by a very lofty peak called Balloon Peak, and said to be 9,000 feet in height, while turning round and looking towards the West Coast, the page 9 Arthur Valley is in view with its extremely grand surroundings. To the writer, the Clinton side of the Pass seemed to present a combination of grandeur and beauty, while the Arthur side seemed grander but hardly so beautiful, although this may be from the fact that, while the view is nearly straight down the Clinton Valley, it is very quickly intercepted in the Arthur Valley by a projecting mountain range. Certain it is, however, that the scenery is more grand and majestic on the Arthur side, for its mountains are higher, its glaciers more abundant, its creeks and rivers more turbulent, its valley sides so precipitous that the word gorge seems more fitting than valley, while all around old father Time's mills are hoard grinding away in the form of avalanches, slow but exceedingly sure in their work of bringing on the time when literally "the valleys shall be exalted, the mountains laid low, the crooked straight, and the waste places plain," for, without doubt, the mountains are slowly being levelled and the valleys filled up. All the grandeur and beauty makes one realise what a splendid asset this poor depressed Colony has been so long neglecting, for in no part of the world is so magnificent a combination of the grand and beautiful, of the immense and minute, of the intricate and simple to be found; at any rate, not in New Zealand or Switzerland, for the writer has seen all the former, and a great portion of the latter. The Saddle itself is covered with a kind of mountain grass and is studded all over with Ranunculus Lyalli (mountain lily), several forms of Celmesia (mountain daisy), and with Edelweiss plants, which were all in blossom at the time of the writer's visit, making the whole surroundings a veritable tourist's Arcadia.

Having spent an hour or so on the Pass, and after a "billy" of tea in addition to drinking in the district's magnificent surrounding spectacle, the journey was resumed, and the very precipitous western side of the Pass negotiated. Delay in ascending the Clinton side, and delay on the top for the purposes of admiration, caused another tent pitching, although the Beach Hut was now only two miles distant. The tent was therefore pitched about halfway down the Pass, on what was comparatively a level place, but, for all that, the writer's sleeping bunk had its head about three feet higher than its foot.