javariscrittenton:

“he had travelled every inch of the west coast, on foot, by cart, on horseback, and by canoe. he could picture the entire length of it, as though upon a richly illustrated map: in the far north, mohikinui and karamea, where the mosses were fat and damp, where the leaves were waxy, where the bush was an earthy smelling tangle, where the nikau fronds, shed from the trunks of the palms, lay upon the ground as huge and heavy as the flukes of whales; further south, the bronze lacquer of the taramakau, the crenulated towers at punakaiki, the marshy flats north of hokitika, always crawling with the smoky mist of not-quite-rain; then the cradled lakes, then the silent valleys, thick with green; then the twisting flanks of the glaciers, rippled blue and grey; then the comb of the high alps; then, at last okahu and mahitahi in the far south – wide, shingled beaches littered with the bones of mighty trees, where the surf was a ceaseless battery, and the wind a ceaseless roar.”
eleanor catton, the luminaries (p. 370)

early photography of the west coast, te waipounamu. all photos taken with permission from the national library.