105

C—l

THE KARANGAROA RIVER AND PASSES TO CANTERBURY. On the Ist October, 1894, Mr. C. Douglas and I started up the Karangaroa Valley with three or four months' provisions. We had little difficulty in taking a horse to about a mile above the junction of the Copland River, at which point we built a "futtah," and stored our belongings. A week or two was spent in staging stores and establishing a head camp on Cassell's Flat, near the inflow of the Twain River. Unfortunately, Mr. Douglas had been suffering severely from rheumatism, and though, with his usual determination, he eventually reached Camp 5, above the great cataracts, he was obliged to give in, and return to habitation about ten days before Christmas. Previous to that date he had been down, and was endeavouring to find a man who would proceed up the river with me, but there seems to be a rooted antipathy to all work entailing the slightest hardship, or necessitating exploration in untrodden ground, among the young men of the district. Between the 29th October and the 6th December, while camping at Cassell's Flat, we had some thirty-three wet days, and, the river being continually in flood, little could be done. However, I had time to reconnoitre the Twain Gorge, with a view to finding a route through it to the upper basin. After failing on the south bank, owing to sheer rock-walls rising for 2,000 ft. or more out of the water, I tried again on the northern side, but here a bluff of rock stopped further progress about a mile and a half from the forks. On this side the hill does not rise precipitously out of the river, but has a slope of some 35°, with bluffs descending from the top of the ridge to the water's edge, obliquely to the course of the river, and varying in height from 500 ft. downwards. The first attempt on the northern side was stopped by a bluff of about 100 ft. of smooth ice-worn rock near the river, and on the second attempt I took a high, level route, being again stopped by, I believe, the same bluff, some 1,700 ft. above the water. Unfortunately, at this time I was working alone, Douglas being unable to find any one to come up; but had there been two of us a way could have been found through the gorge, with the help of a rope. It was, however, evident that, in order to get our necessaries in to the head basin of the Twain, some easier way must be found higher up the Karangaroa River. After blazing a track through the gorge of the latter river, and passing the great cataracts, we camped on the-11th December in the upper valley, which will be more fully described later, and Douglas, who had returned, came up with a Maori, while I pushed on with a light camp, and on the 18th December crossed the saddle at the head of the Karangaroa into the McKerrow Glacier. On returning down the river I found that Douglas had decided to go back, having reached Camp No. 5 with great difficulty only, feeling it impossible to go on with such bad rheumatism. Sending the Maori down for some one to meet us at the "futtah" camp, we returned down the river, and, having seen Douglas safely established in our head camp, I went back, arriving again with camp and stores at the small flat under the saddle on Christmas morning, being afterwards joined by the Maori who had been sent after me. I cannot let this opportunity pass without adding a word to the general opinion held by old inhabitants of this coast of Douglas's splendid work amongst the West Coast ranges. As to his past twenty years' explorations, I can only speak from hearsay, but I had the privilege of working with him last year in exploring the Waiho and Cook Rivers, and, though I did not join him until his powers were practically broken by past exposure and hardship, I shall always consider it a privilege to have been even for one year the mate of such a thorough explorer in every sense of the word. He explored for the sake of the work itself, never caring whether his doings were noticed or not —a great contrast to many, who do much work only for the advertisement it gives them. Before going in to the Twain River we went down the Landsborough Valley by the south bank to examine a line for the proposed track over Broderick's Pass. Expecting to find plenty of birds in this valley, we only took a few pounds of flour and some tea and sugar; but, thanks to the weasels, one of which was seen within ten miles of the head of the river, we only succeeded in getting four birds in the five days which it took us to reach McKenzie's Creek under the pass—a two and a half days' journey in fine weather, but we were unlucky in having two days' heavy rain. Leaving all we had, and being entirely without eatables at this point, we pushed on next day to Mr. Nightingale's camp on the Haast Pass Road, some fifteen miles or more further down the river, for supplies, and having obtained the3e, and laid in a stock of smoked wekas, we returned to McKenzie's Creek. The lower flats of the Landsborough River from McKenzie's Creek to the Haast are swarming with rabbits. I have never seen so many in such a small space before. So far as this line of track is concerned, it has one very serious drawback—namely, its distance. Having a probable pass at the head of the Copland Valley in view, I only made a hasty inspection of this route. The chief points of difficulty, and ones which may prove insuperable to anything beyond a mule-track, are from Cassell's Flat to the top of the cataracts, a very sudden rise in a short distance, the descent from the Karangaroa Saddle into the Landsborough River, and the ascent from that river to Broderick's Pass. I do not profess to be able to give an opinion of much weight as to the possibility or otherwise of a track in very rough country, having no claims to be an expert on such matters, but I base my conclusions on roads and tracks which I have been over in Switzerland and elsewhere. Broderick's Pass is an open grass-saddle, which drops steeply for a short distance into a flat-bottomed gully lined by almost perpendicular walls for, perhaps, half a mile, when the creek which flows in the gully takes a leap over a broken and weathering precipice of several hundred feet into the Landsborough Valley. No doubt, with the help of much solid masonry, a path could be brought round along the rock-face on the eastern side of the gully to the open grass-spur, whence a line could easily be found, by zig-zags, into the lower valley ; but for an ordinarily-formed track I consider the slopes and precipices between the saddle and the river too rotten, and too subject to falling rocks, to be successfully or even safely made. 14—C. 1.