The Angry Waters.

But the Waiho in flood! No wonder the natives called it—and this is the correct spelling—“Waiau,” or “Smoking Waters.” In flood time, you see a phenomenon

“Praise the bridge that carries you over.”
Where the Main South Road (Westland) crosses the Waiho River. (The famous Franz Josef Glacier may be seen in the background.)

peculiar to this swift, turbulent mass of water that comes hurtling down from the Franz Josef glacier. From the tearing, boiling flood, rise clouds of white smoke, so that as you gaze up and down from the Main South Road bridge, the entire surface of the river is hidden from view.

In March, after those ten inches of rain, the Waiho was running a banker. More than a banker, in fact, for the treacherous flood was soon eating out the banks on the southern side, and before nightfall several chains of metalled road had been swept away. Late in the afternoon we trooped out to see the damage. A telegraph post had just crashed down into the flood, taking with it some more of the road and a tangle of wire. As we approached, another piece of the overhanging bank fell in with a thunder-clap that sounded above the roar of the river. Half-a-dozen men were busy clearing away the tangle of telegraph wire and undergrowth, fixing barriers at either end of the danger zone, chopping down trees for a deviation. Standing there, a little closer to the edge of the bank than safety permitted, I looked out over the grey, swirling flood that reached now from bank to bank. Swift and terrible as the Aratiatia Rapids roared the river beneath the crumbling banks; foam crested waves came racing in from the main current, swirling high against the banks, taking ever fresh toll of rocks and soil. Soon came another crash, and the cry “Stand back!” For a moment the mists lifted, and we saw the tossing flood in all its sullen grandeur; then the white clouds swept up again, and all was hidden.

In the grey twilight we made our way back to the hotel, dim shapes of men and page 39 women moving in the misty darkness of the forest road. On the bridge we paused; the river was now past the height of the flood—these Westland rivers rise and fall very quickly—and a curious phenomenon was taking place. Two sets of current seemed to meet in mid-stream, sending up high-crested waves that reached as far back as one could see. In the gathering darkness they looked like a long row of haycocks tossing and swirling down the bed of the river. Above the tumult of the water sounded the grinding and crashing of great blocks of ice from the terminal face of the glacier—there must have been Titan sport going on up there beneath the ice-precipices of Franz Josef that day! ….

“Delayed by flood” ran a sheaf of telegrams sent from Waiho Gorge that evening. “And the best bit of sight-seeing in the whole trip!” would have been an adequate tribute to the privilege of that magnificent spectacle, the Waiho in flood.

“In one diffusive band They drive the troubled flock.”—James Thomson
Driving sheep up the bed of the Waiho River, Westland, New Zealand.