mistake or any hesitation on the driver's part; and yet, after a few hours of it, one loses all sense of danger. During this part of the journey the district is subalpine, but with scarcely any characteristic flora, a vast stretch of good sheep country, rising as high in places as seven thousand feet, well watered, but liable to heavy winter snowfall. Its inhabitants are few and very far between. At night we find comfortable hospitality at the half-way house, ready for another morning's start. The second day brings you to the true Alpine region. Starting at six, a halt is called at nine for breakfast on the banks of a formidable river, the Waimakariri, one of the South Island glacier-fed torrents, which wanders, in dry seasons, over a river bed more than a mile in width, and in flood time becomes one broad impassable stream. We find it fairly low, but that means half-a-dozen streams, deep enough to cover the wheels, rushing at great pace over such a rough bottom that, as the coach pitched and rolled like a boat at sea, one wondered it could hold together. A capsize would be no joke, for the water is icy cold, and rushing so fast that a swimmer would have but a poor chance. The river crossed, a lovely but very dangerous, long, gradual ascent of the Otira Pass lay before us. Everywhere the mountain sides clothed with mountain birch; every variety of rich fern growth and moss, nourished by the never-ceasing waterfalls which pour down from the heights above, where snow is always lying. As you near the top of the pass, which is nearly four thousand feet, the road is amongst huge masses of rock, fallen from above, and continues for nearly eight miles, up and down, until it reaches the western descent; but sterile and bleak and savage enough to be the haunt
