with a glisten in the sun, and were gone. There was a kind of dusky
brownish-green parrot, too, which the scientific call a Nestor. What
they mean by this name I know not. To the un-scientific it is a rather
dirty-looking bird, with some bright red feathers under its wings. It
is very tame, sits still to be petted, and screams like a real parrot.
Two attended us on our ascent after leaving the bush. We threw many
stones at them, and it was not their fault that they escaped unhurt.

Immediately on emerging from the bush we found all vegetation at an end.
We were on the moraine of an old glacier, and saw nothing in front of us
but frightful precipices and glaciers. There was a saddle, however, not
above a couple of thousand feet higher. This saddle was covered with
snow, and, as we had neither provisions nor blankets, we were obliged to
give up going to the top of it. We returned with less reluctance, from
the almost absolute certainty, firstly, that we were not upon the main
range; secondly, that this saddle would only lead to the Waimakiriri,
the next river above the Rakaia. Of these two points my companion was
so convinced, that we did not greatly regret leaving it unexplored. Our
object was commercial, and not scientific; our motive was pounds,
shillings, and pence: and where this failed us, we lost all excitement
and curiosity. I fear that we were yet weak enough to have a little
hankering after the view from the top of the pass, but we treated such
puerility with the contempt that it deserved, and sat down to rest
ourselves at the foot of a small glacier. We then descended, and
reached the horses at nightfall, fully satisfied that, beyond the flat
beside the riverbed of the Harpur, there was no country to be had in
that direction. We also felt certain that there was no pass to the west
coast up that branch of the Rakaia, but that the saddle at the head of
it would only lead to the Waimakiriri, and reveal the true backbone
range farther to the west. The mountains among which we had been