Water, the force that beautifies the west and south-west, has been the chief foe of their explorers. The first whites to penetrate their gorges and wet forests found their main obstacles in rivers, lakes, and swamps. Unlike pioneers elsewhere, they had nothing to fear from savages, beasts, reptiles, or fever. Brunner, one of the earliest to enter Westland, spent more than a year away from civilisation, encountering hardship, but never in danger of violence from man or beast. Still, such a rugged and soaking labyrinth could not be traversed and mapped out without loss. There is a death-roll, though not a very long one. Nearly all the deaths were due to drowning. Mr. Charlton Howitt, one of the Anglo-Victorian family of writers and explorers, was lost with two companions in Lake Brunner. The one survivor of Howitt’s party died from the effects of hardship. Mr. Townsend, a Government officer, who searched Lake Brunner for Howitt’s body, was himself drowned not long after, also with two companions. Mr. Whitcombe, surveyor, perished in trying to cross the Teremakau in a canoe. Von Haast’s friend, the botanist Dr. Sinclair, was drowned in a torrent in the Alps of Canterbury. Quintin M’Kinnon, who did as much as any one to open up the region between the southern lakes and the Sounds, sank in a squall while sailing alone in Lake Te Anau. Professor Brown, of the University of Otago, who disappeared in the wilds to the west of Manapouri, is believed to have been swept away in a stream there. The surveyor Quill, the only man who has yet climbed to the top of the Sutherland Falls, lost his life afterwards in the Wakatipu wilderness. Only one death by man’s violence is to be noted in the list--that of Dobson, a young surveyor of much promise, who was murdered by bush-rangers in northern Westland about forty years ago. I have named victims well known and directly engaged in exploring. The number of gold-diggers, shepherds, swagmen, and nondescripts who have gone down in the swift and ice-cold rivers of our mountains is large. Among them are not a few nameless adventurers drawn westward by the gold rushes of the ’sixties. It is a difficult matter to gauge from the bank the precise amount of risk to be faced in fording a clouded torrent as it swirls down over hidden boulders and shifting shingle. Even old hands miscalculate sometimes. When once a swagman stumbles badly and loses his balance, he is swept away, and the struggle is soon over. There is a cry; a man and a swag are rolled over and over; he drops his burden and one or both are sucked under in an eddy--perhaps to reappear, perhaps not. It may be that the body is stranded on a shallow, or it may be that the current bears it down to a grave in the sea. [Illustration: BELOW THE JUNCTION OF THE BULLER AND INANGAHUA RIVERS]