A climber in New Zealand

by Malcolm Ross

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Mount Cook, from a Tarn on the Sealy Range	[Frontispiece]
	FACING PAGE
Ruapehu from Ngauruhoe, looking through the Rift at the Side of the latter Volcano	[6]
Crater of Ngauruhoe, party on farther lip of Inner Crater through which clouds of steam rise 3000 feet	[10]
Kaufmann, Rev. W. S. Green, and Boss in New Zealand	[16]
Jack Clark, New Zealand Alpine Guide	[16]
Peter Graham, New Zealand Alpine Guide	[16]
The Hermitage, Mount Cook	[30]
Crossing the Hooker River in the Cage	[48]
Crossing the Tasman River, Dixon driving	[54]
Camp Cookery at Bivouac Rock, De la Bêche	[54]
The Mount Cook Bivouac	[66]
The Hooker River, Moorhouse Range in background	[74]
Camp on Plateau, during attacks on Mount Cook	[88]
Crossing the Murchison River—Fyfe and Turner	[88]
Elie de Beaumont, from Malte Brun Bivouac	[100]
Mount Cook from the Upper Tasman	[114]
Mount Darwin	[122]
Mount Sefton; the short white line at foot of dark moraine in middle distance is the Hermitage	[130]
Cooking Scones at Ball Glacier Camp	[140]
T. C. Fyfe, emerging from Murchison River	[140]
The Sun-bonnet Brigade, on Tasman Glacier Ice Cliff	[158]
On the Upper Tasman, Mount Darwin in background	[158]
De la Bêche Bivouac Rock	[166]
Crevasse on Tasman Glacier, from 400 to 500 feet deep	[182]
On Lake Te Anau	[222]
Homeward Bound, Sealy Range with Footstool of Sefton in background	[244]
Mount Walter, part of Elie de Beaumont on right	[272]
Above the Clouds: view from Mount Cook Bivouac; Tasman Glacier thousands of feet below; Leibig Range in background	[286]
Mount Tasman, from 11,000 feet on Mount Cook	[290]
A 3000-feet Slope, the dotted line indicates route to where the Zurbriggen Arête is reached	[296]
Summit of Mount Cook: First photograph of it taken: Graham, Turner, and Fyfe on summit	[296]

A CLIMBER IN NEW ZEALAND

CHAPTER I

DESCRIPTIVE AND HISTORICAL

We took the path our fathers trod,

With swinging stride, and brave:

The thews we have, the hearts we hold,

Are what our fathers gave.

Wandering through an English village, not so many years ago, a friend chanced upon a dame’s school in which New Zealand was being described as “some small islands off the coast of Australia, infested with rabbits”; and only three years ago my wife was asked by a lady in the Lyceum Club, in London, if the Maoris were still cannibals, and if there were tigers in the jungle! It is not, perhaps, surprising, then, that astonishment should still be expressed when the statement is made that New Zealand has Alps and glaciers vieing in grandeur and in beauty with those of Switzerland. Distant fields are green, but seldom white; and New Zealand is a Far Country. The New Zealander, however, born and bred fifteen thousand miles away, still calls England “Home.” Long may he continue to do so! He knows more of England than England knows of him, and in time of stress he will cheerfully give, out of his slender means, a battle-cruiser as an object-lesson to the world; or, in time of danger, dye the veldt with his own red blood. And there will be nothing of selfishness in the sacrifice, as has sometimes been hinted to me by the Little Englander.

But, reverting to the main question, this ignorance in regard to the Outer Empire, which still prevails, reminds one of the story told by a well-known author on mountaineering, who once saw in the parlour of a cottage in England a wonderful erection of what appeared to be brown paper and shavings, built up in rock-like fashion, covered with little toy-box trees and dotted here and there with bits of mirror glass and cardboard houses. “What,” inquired the visitor, “may this be?” “That,” said the owner of the house, very slowly, “is the work of my late ’usband—a representation of the Halps, as close as ’e could imagine it, for ’e never was abroad.”

Like this lady’s “late ’usband,” there are many people who have heard of our Alps and volcanoes, yet have little idea of their size and importance. Let me endeavour, by way of introduction,—which the non-Alpine reader may skip if he likes,—to give some idea of the character of these mountains and of their history from a climber’s point of view.

The flora and fauna of the New Zealand mountains are especially interesting, but it would need much more space than is available within the limits of this book to deal adequately with them. Such references as I have made are only the passing comments of the climber, and not, in any way, the studied dissections of the scientist. But there is one matter, partly of historic and partly of scientific interest, the facts of which may very well be placed on record here. It relates to an experiment in acclimatization that is, I believe, unique in the history of the world.

I had often thought about the introduction of chamois to the Southern Alps; but the difficulties of capturing a sufficient number and of transporting them from the heart of Europe half-way round the world and through the tropic seas seemed so great as to make the experiment almost impossible of achievement. But some few years ago, when my friend Kontre-Admiral Ritter Ludwig von Höhnel, then an honorary aide-de-camp on the staff of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary,—himself a famous chamois hunter,—was in New Zealand, we talked the matter over. Höhnel then said to me that if he could get some of the curious New Zealand birds, such as the kiwi, the weka, the kakapo, and the kea for His Majesty’s Zoological Gardens at Schönbrunn, he believed that the Emperor, in return, would send out some chamois for the New Zealand Alps. This was too good a chance to be missed, and I told him that, so far as the New Zealand Government was concerned, I felt sure that our side of the project was already as good as arranged. Von Höhnel replied that he could not, of course, speak for the Emperor, but he would do his best to persuade him. Without more ado I took my friend along and introduced him to Mr. T. E. Donne, then the head of the Tourist Department, and he, being keenly interested in acclimatization matters and also a sportsman, promptly fell in with the idea, which was also readily taken up and sanctioned by Sir Joseph Ward, at that time the minister in charge of the Tourist Department. In due course the birds were sent to Austria, and eight chamois were forwarded to New Zealand via London in 1907. The chamois arrived in New Zealand on March 14th of the same year. They received the utmost attention on the voyage, and stood the journey very well. I went to see them on the arrival of the steamer, and they appeared to be in fine condition. Afterwards they were sent by steamer and train and wagon to Mount Cook and liberated in their new home in the Southern Alps. A few years ago some of them were seen, by one of the guides, with young at foot.

The other day, while in Vienna, I paid a visit to Schönbrunn, and looked for the New Zealand birds. I found that all but one had died. He was a sedate and venerable kea, and very sad he looked, confined, as he was, in an ordinary parrot cage. I said a few words to him in his own kea language, and he cocked his head knowingly on one side and eyed me curiously as if he had heard the sounds before but had almost forgotten them. For his own part, he seemed to have lost the power of speech in kea language. I have no doubt in the years gone by he was one of the young bloods of Kea land who used to come home with the milk and rouse us from our peaceful slumbers in the mountain hut on the Great Tasman Glacier, and that I myself had hurled both stones and imprecations at his wise-looking head. But now I felt sad at heart when I saw him cribbed, cabined, and confined in his little cage. It seemed as if his death after all would be laid at my door, and I longed to take him back with me to his friends and relatives in his home in the Southern Alps. But with the chamois it is different. They have a new home more glorious than their old one, and for years to come they must be protected from the gun of the hunter. In these Southern Alpine solitudes they can multiply and thrive in the land of the bird for which they were exchanged, while he—poor fellow—pines in his foreign cage.

The capturing of these chamois for New Zealand resulted in the destruction of many others, which, in their wild flight from their would-be captors, dashed themselves to death over the precipices of their rocky fastnesses, while others were maimed. There was therefore an outcry in Austria against their capture. Through the persistent efforts of the Admiral, however, the experiment is to be repeated this year on a small scale. I had the good fortune to meet him again in Vienna the other day, and he was quite keen about it, there being now, of course, a necessity for a change of blood if the experiment is to be quite a success. New Zealand owes to the Emperor Franz Josef and to Rear-Admiral von Höhnel its best thanks for their efforts in connexion with this novel essay.

The mountain system of New Zealand is as varied as it is interesting. In the North Island there is a series of volcanic mountains as fascinating, almost, as are the Southern Alps. How the fire came to New Zealand is told in Maori legend. The Maoris themselves looked upon the higher volcanic mountains with superstitious awe, and they considered them tapu, or sacred. No white man, and certainly no Maori, dared set foot upon them; and the fact that they were tapu prevented, for a long time, the obtaining of scientific knowledge regarding their craters and their summit configuration generally. Their origin was attributed to a famous tohunga, or high priest, who piloted one of the canoes of the early migrants from Hawaiki, the fabled home of the Maori people. This man, with another high chief, took possession of all the country between the Bay of Plenty and Mount Ruapehu. In order to assure fruitful years, these two ascended the neighbouring volcano of Ngauruhoe, and set up an altar to make the necessary incantations. The cold then, as now, was very bitter,—for the winds blow keen from the adjacent snows,—and it seemed as if the old tohunga would die, when happily the thought occurred to him of sending for some of the sacred fire that was in the keeping of one of his sisters in far-away Hawaiki. She straightway came with the fire. Wherever she halted in her underground travels there fire remained, and where she came to the surface to breathe there appeared boiling pools and geysers. Thus there was a trail of fire and boiling pools all along her route from White Island, down through all the thermal region to Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu. The fire revived the old man, and, in commemoration of the event, he left it burning in Ngauruhoe. As a sacrifice to the gods he cast his slave wife down the crater, and the mountain has ever afterwards been called by her name. The legend is picturesque, but unsatisfying. Years afterwards a famous chief called Te Heuheu was killed in a great landslip on the shores of Lake Taupo. His body was being taken to burial on the sacred mountain, when a terrific thunderstorm, or an eruption, came on, and the bearers, hastily depositing their burden in a cave, turned and fled. This made the mountain still more sacred and the early scientists dared not attempt to explore the range. Both Hochstetter and Dieffenbach must have been greatly disappointed that they were not allowed to set foot upon these sacred mountains, because then, as now, Ngauruhoe was the real centre of volcanic energy in New Zealand.

Ruapehu from Ngauruhoe.

It is, however, the thermal region in the vicinity of Lakes Rotorua, Rotomahana, Tarawera, and Taupo that is best known to the great majority of New Zealanders and to the sight-seers, who, from all parts of the civilized world, flock to this truly wonderful region. All the thermal phenomena possible seem to have been plentifully distributed throughout this territory. The crowning glory of it all was the Pink and White Terraces; but these, alas! are no more, for on June 10, 1886, they were either blown to bits or buried in the rain of mud and scoria that came from the eruption of Tarawera, and made the beautiful surrounding country a desolate wilderness. The story of that eruption with its loss of life, both Maori and European, has often been told, and there is no need to repeat it here. Nature is gradually reclothing the scarred hillsides, and even the bruised and wounded trees have been healed by the hand of time. The tourist wanders through the land just as he did before the eruption, and the birds and the fish killed or starved to death, as a result of the rain of mud and stones and fiery bombs, have been replaced by others of their kind. In this particular part of the thermal region the main centre of activity remained at the site of the old terraces, but during later years it seems to have shifted to the region of the famous but short-lived Waimangu geyser. This huge geyser threw a column of boiling water, steam, mud, and stones considerably over a thousand feet in air. In August 1903 the geyser was the scene of a terrible tragedy, an unusually severe eruption resulting in the death of two young girls, another visitor, and the guide, Joe Warbrick. The party had gone rather close in order to get a photograph. The eruption suddenly became terrific, and a great column of boiling water, shooting out at an angle, swept them off the hill into the overflow from the geyser. They were carried down in boiling water for nearly a mile towards Lake Rotomahana. The bodies were recovered shortly afterwards. Within the last few years Waimangu has become quiescent, but there is still great activity near by at a spot that has been aptly named Frying-pan Flat. There is much thermal activity too on what is supposed to be the site of the old Pink Terraces.

The completion of the North Island Main Trunk Railway has now brought the volcanoes within easy reach both of Wellington and Auckland, and year by year Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, and the Tongariro Range are becoming favoured playgrounds for the more energetic class of holiday-makers. Ngauruhoe is apparently entering upon a period of renewed activity, and within the last four or five years there have been some fine volcanic displays from its crater. It is a perfect volcanic cone, 7515 feet high, and terminates the Tongariro Mountain Range to the southward—a range that has, within comparatively recent times, been the scene of tremendous volcanic energy. The desolate nature of the country on the eastern side of the mountain, and the vast extinct craters of the range itself, are now silent witnesses of the fiery activity of bygone ages.

There are still several centres of great thermal energy on the Tongariro Range. At the lower and northern end Te Mari and Ketetahi are in a state of almost perpetual turmoil, and clouds of steam rising from their seething cauldrons are visible many miles away. The Red Crater, near the middle of the Range, is still hot in places, and jets of steam hiss through small vents in the gloriously tinted rocks of its sides. At the extreme southern end of the range is the active volcano of Ngauruhoe. In winter-time its slopes are clothed in snow and ice. Occasionally, for days at a time, it sends a vast column of steam fully 3000 feet in the air, and then it is a magnificent sight. At the period of greatest activity the scene must have been almost beyond description. Ngauruhoe was then, indeed, a hell unchained. A New Zealand poet—Mr. D. M. Ross—has graphically depicted such a scene as may well have been witnessed by the original inhabitants of Maoriland—

“O’er Vassal Peaks thy smoky banners spread,

Splashed with red flame as ever on they sped

In serried ranks, squired by the lesser hills,

To purple realms of mystery; the day

Failed of her sun when thy red furnace flamed,

And night was all aglow when earthquakes played

Beneath thy heaving breast of startled snows.”

About two years ago a geologist saw lava in the crater, and, later still, when the mountain was particularly active, a glow as from molten lava appeared in the sky. It would not be at all surprising if at any time there were an eruption on a grand scale. Fortunately, the surrounding country is so unproductive as to be but sparsely settled, and therefore a serious eruption would be more spectacular than destructive.

The Southern Alps extend in a series of ranges from the north to the extreme south of the Middle Island. In the south, the ranges, which run in different directions, are intersected by the splendid fiords on the one side and by the arms of the long, deep lakes on the other. The mountain masses, in some places, come sheer down to the water’s edge, and their bases are far below the level of the lakes or of the sea. Many of their lower slopes are densely wooded, while their summits are capped with perpetual snow and ice. In the region of Milford Sound they rise steeply from the water’s edge, and their solid and sometimes smooth granite walls seem uninviting to the foot of the climber. Going farther north we have another fine series of mountains in the region of Lakes Wakatipu and Wanaka. Though not high, as heights go in the European Alps or in the Himalaya, they are imposing mountains. It is only within comparatively recent years that passes have been discovered between the lakes and the sounds; and although these passes do not lead the traveller beyond the sub-Alpine heights, they take him through scenery that is no less remarkable for its beauty than for its grandeur—a fitting introduction to those greater marvels in the heart of the Southern Alps.

Northwards, from Mount Aspiring, which is at the head of this jumble of southern mountains that spreads itself through fiordland and lakeland, the Southern Alps proper extend in an almost unbroken chain along the western side of the Middle Island of New Zealand to where Mount Cook, or Aorangi, rears his snow-crowned ridge above the grim precipices and flanking glaciers, and, dominating the landscape, gives an outlook from sea to sea. Here we are amongst the monarchs of the range, and the views are indescribably grand. There is a glorious Alpine panorama stretching north and south, and, though all the highest mountains have been climbed, there are hundreds and hundreds of untrodden peaks and passes still awaiting the foot of the climber.

Crater of Ngauruhoe.

Travelling over the level lands in the south-bound train from Christchurch on a summer’s day, one sees wheat fence-high and golden in the sun, the grey-green of oats in ear, the darker green of well-tilled root crops, interspersed with clumps and lines of English and Australian trees, making relieving splashes of colour against the purple haze of the foothills, and indicating a fertile soil. At intervals we rumble over the long bridge of some snow-fed river, with its great shingle flats and islands, and its opalescent water forming many interlacing streams, and we realize that the work done in the giant laboratory of the Frost King, in the heart of the Alps, is here finding its full fruition. We know also that the planing glacier, the eroding torrent, and the crumbling moraine are still at work. They are the Mills of the Gods, slowly grinding, and though they grind exceedingly small, they have made, in time, through the agency of these great snow-fed rivers, a land that is of a verity flowing with milk and honey—a land that is already the granary of the islands. Thus the Southern Alps have an important bearing upon the economic possibilities of the country. Their never-failing rivers, by means of irrigation, will make possible a still more intense cultivation on the plains of Canterbury and Otago. But beyond all this there are possibilities almost undreamt of in the enormous power from lake and river now running to waste. In short, the Southern Alps may one day make New Zealand not only the playground of Australasia, but its manufactory as well. A return recently compiled, giving the more important available water powers in both islands, shows an average of 3,817,180 horse power and 2,854,470 kilowatts. A considerable number of these powers are suitable for general industrial development, but the largest ones, being mainly in the unsettled portions of the Middle Island, and near the deep-water sounds, are particularly suitable for utilization in connexion with electric-chemical or electric-metallurgical industries. Finally, the Southern Alps must not be despised from the tourist point of view. They already bring many visitors to New Zealand from all parts of the world; and in years to come, when torrid Australia and the sweltering Pacific number their population by many millions, this splendid mountain chain both in summer and in winter will have become the playground of the new nations under the Southern Cross.

But apart altogether from the physical aspect and the economic aspect, a splendid Alpine chain, such as forms the backbone of the Middle Island of New Zealand, is almost certain to have some influence upon the character and physique of the nation, and more especially upon the character and physique of a nation endowed with those qualities of hardihood and adventure that are such predominant features of the Anglo-Saxon race. In an interesting article on “Mountaineering as a Sport for Soldiers,” published in the Times in 1907, the writer—Mr. L. M. S. Amery—pointed out that “there can be few better tests of the essential qualities of leadership than a really critical moment on a mountain. The man who can retain his judgment and confidence, and keep up the spirits of his party, when the way has already been lost, when all the rocks are coated with new verglas, when fingers are numb with cold, and when the guides begin to lose their heads and jabber furiously in incomprehensible patois—he is the man who (in warfare) is no less certain to keep his nerve and sustain his subordinates when casualties are heaviest, and the hope of support faintest.” Where there are mountains and where there are British people there will, of a surety, be climbing, and the sport develops character and brings out qualities that are of first importance in the affairs of everyday life as well as in warfare. From this point of view, therefore, as well as from the others mentioned, New Zealand has a valuable asset in her mountains. It is an asset, too, that is already being developed to some purpose.

The splendid mountain chain that forms the back-bone of the Middle Island was, during the early period of colonization, a terra incognita to all but a few New Zealanders, and it is only within recent years that the sons of those bold pioneers who travelled over so many leagues of ocean to build themselves new homes and to lay the foundation of a new and sturdy nation have ventured into the heart of the Southern Alps to wrest the secrets of the higher snows. The age of conquest has been long delayed, but once started, the conquerors have marched to victory with even greater vigour than did their forefathers in the European Alps. It took some little time to gain the necessary experience, for the Antipodean climbers had not only to learn the craft untaught by others, but they had to be their own guides, their own step-cutters, and even their own porters. With the first taste of victory came the lust for other conquests, and, one by one, the great peaks have fallen, till now there is not one first-class mountain left unconquered, and already “traverses” and new routes up old peaks are becoming the fashion. Though the New Zealanders have won for themselves many of the higher summits, there are a number that have fallen before climbers from the Motherland. The New Zealanders, however, did their work without assistance, and it says much for the courage, for the endurance, and for the resource of the race that the sons of the pioneers have accomplished this remarkable record without a single fatal accident, and indeed without serious misadventure of any kind.

To an Englishman, and a member of the Alpine Club, the Rev. William Spotswood Green, belongs the credit of having initiated Alpine climbing in this the farthermost part of our Outer Empire. It was his work in the Southern Alps that fired the imagination of that hardy band of young Colonial pioneers who, like their forefathers in the Alps of Switzerland, were destined to lead the way in Alpine conquest. Green came with two experienced Swiss climbers,—Emil Boss and Ulrich Kaufmann,—and though he was not successful in reaching the actual summit of Mount Cook, he very nearly got there. The story of his adventures is simply and graphically told in his book, which must ever remain a classic in New Zealand mountaineering literature.

Mr. Green had many difficulties to contend against before he got to Mount Cook. To begin with, his wagonette came to grief in the Tasman and was swept bodily down the river. Birch Hill station was then the last human habitation on the way to the glacier world, and it took a long time before a camp could be established at the foot of the spur where now stands the Ball Hut. The attempt to climb the mountain by the main arête failed. The party got on to a narrow arête along which they came to the first rock-tooth of tottering splintered slate, which was climbed with great difficulty and danger. The ridge connecting this with the next spike was so loose that it trembled beneath their feet and made further climbing madness. An attempt by way of the eastern face of the mountain also failed. The warmth of the sunshine caused many avalanches, one of which nearly buried the party. A route by way of the Great Plateau and the Linda Glacier was, however, discovered. On March 1st the party spent the night on the spur near the Bivouac Rock, subsequently so much used by the New Zealanders. They started next morning on their historic climb via the Linda Glacier, and after some difficulties they found themselves close to the foot of the arête connecting Mount Cook with Mount Tasman. As the party advanced along their route many avalanches fell from Mount Tasman. A halt was made for breakfast, and some of the impedimenta deposited. The crevasses were numerous, and but for the fresh snow would have barred the way. Three hours’ work brought them to the head of the glacier, after which they turned to the left, and, crossing the arête, reached an ice-filled couloir, to gain which they had to do some severe step-cutting. Here the real work began, and the first and last view was got of the western sea. After climbing up the couloir, they reached a wall of ice, and decided, after a council of war, to try to cross the couloir, which at first had been rejected as too dangerous. The setting of the sun lessened the risk, and, though it was an anxious time, the opposite side was reached in safety. After all, the rocks were inaccessible, and the party had to climb through a notch, and thus reach the ice-slope beyond, down which swept a stream of detached ice; and, as it was thawing and getting late in the afternoon, the question of advancing was discussed. But as the bivouac could not be gained before dark, and what was presumed to be only an hour’s work lay before the party, it was decided to go on. Keeping close to the rocks, an icicled bergschrund was reached but avoided by a detour to the left, and at 6 p.m. Mr. Green, Boss, and Kaufmann stepped on to the crest of Aorangi. This was, they thought, too late an hour to permit of their going on to the actual summit. As there were no rocks at hand, no cairn could be built, and they were forced to retreat, leaving no record of their ascent. Until the rocks were reached they had to descend backwards, with faces to the ice. Beneath one or two fragments of rock were placed Mr. Green’s handkerchief and Kaufmann’s match-box. With great difficulty, and some danger, they lowered themselves down the lower end of the ice-slope, and as they crossed the couloir to the opposite rocks, night closed in. In a little time the moon rose, enabling the three men to find a partial shelter beneath the rock-ridge, on a little ledge less than two feet wide and sloping outward, and there they spent the nine hours of darkness, stamping to keep up the circulation, and talking and singing to drive away sleep, which would have been fatal to them. Every quarter of an hour an avalanche rumbled, there being a warm north-west wind, which probably saved them from being frost-bitten. At 5.30 the descent was recommenced, and the snow was found to be very soft, one crevasse being almost impassable. The plateau was completely changed in aspect by an immense avalanche, but they found the knapsack where it had been left, and enjoyed its contents (although the bread was twenty days old), for they had been twenty-two hours without food. In the séracs they found their track obliterated, one avalanche having covered an area of two hundred acres and filled up a large crevasse. While they were crossing the Great Plateau a grand avalanche fell from the Tasman cliffs with a deafening crash. At 1 p.m. the bivouac was reached, and a welcome cup of tea and half an hour’s rest enjoyed. Then they returned to their camp at the Ball Glacier in the Tasman Valley.

Peter Graham.

Kaufmann. Green. Boss.

Long before Mr. Green’s visit the early pioneers had done considerable preliminary exploratory and geological work, though they did no serious Alpine climbing. Many of these, including Dr. von Haast, have now passed away. As an indication of the dangers these pioneers had to face, it may be mentioned that out of quite a small band Mr. Howitt lost his life in Lake Brunner in 1863, and Mr. G. Dobson was murdered on the West Coast in 1866. Dr. Sinclair was drowned in one of the branches of the Rangitata River. He was buried at a place called Mesopotamia, in the words of his friend, Dr. von Haast, “near the banks of the river just where it emerges from the Alps, with their perpetual snowfields glistening in the sun. Amidst veronicas, senecios, and covered with celmesias and gentians, there lies his lonely grave.”

Jack Clark.

Following in Mr. Green’s footsteps came the Canterbury Climbers. They tried Mount Cook by Green’s route; but, like him, they failed, though on one occasion Messrs. Mannering and Dixon made a heroic effort and got within about a couple of hundred feet of the summit.

The season of 1893-94 will ever be memorable in the annals of New Zealand mountaineering, for that was the season in which the first of the great peaks fell. On March 7, 1895, Fyfe, by himself, made the first ascent of that splendid rock peak Malte Brun (10,241 feet); with Jack Clark and Dr. Franz Kronecker (a tourist from Germany) he climbed Mount Darwin (9700 feet); and with George Graham he ascended Mount de la Bêche (10,040 feet) and the Footstool (9073 feet). It was a fine performance for the young New Zealanders, who had by this time acquired not only the craft of climbing, but also of route-finding.

Meantime there had been no further serious attempt upon Mount Cook, but early in the season 1894-95 the New Zealanders were again at work, and, on Christmas Day 1894, succeeded in making the first ascent of Mount Cook. Their struggles, under adverse circumstances, and their final success, are dealt with in another part of this book.

That same season, Mr. E. A. Fitzgerald, a member of the English Alpine Club, arrived with the famous guide Zurbriggen to climb Mount Cook and other peaks. The visitors spent some time in Christchurch, and on their way to the theatre of operations they met the victorious New Zealanders returning from their conquest. Fitzgerald, however, continued his expedition, and did some remarkably fine work, including the first ascents of Mount Tasman (11,467 feet), Mount Sefton (10,350 feet), Mount Haidinger (10,063 feet), and Mount Sealy (8651 feet). To Mr. Fitzgerald also belongs the honour of having discovered an easy pass from the vicinity of Mount Cook to the West Coast—a pass that others had been seeking for some time but had failed to find.

There was no further serious climbing for a few years, until Mr. T. C. Fyfe and the writer made the first ascent of the Minarets (10,058 feet), an ascent of Haidinger by the eastern face, and the first pass between the head of the Great Tasman Glacier and the West Coast. In 1905 our party made the first traverse of Mount Cook. About the same time the West Coast climbers Dr. Teichelman and the Rev. Mr. Newton, with Mr. R. S. Low, a Scottish climber, and guide Alex. Graham, came into prominence. They commenced a series of ascents from the western side of the range, on which the scenery is more varied and even more imposing than it is on the eastern side. They made the first ascent of St. David’s Dome (10,410 feet), and made a new high pass over the main divide to the Tasman. Some fine work was also accomplished that season by Mr. H. Sillem, in company with the New Zealand guides Clark and Graham. He ascended Mount Cook, Malte Brun, the Footstool, and Sealy, and succeeded in making the first ascent of Elie de Beaumont (10,200 feet) and the southern peak of Mount Cook (11,844 feet). In 1907 Dr. Teichelman and the Rev. Mr. Newton, with Alex. Graham, made the first ascent of Mount Douglas (10,107 feet) and of Torris Peak (10,576 feet). Mounts Haast, Lendenfeld, Conway, and Glacier Peak (all over 10,000 feet) also fell to them. There were no high ascents made in 1908; but in the 1909 season the guides were kept busy. Mr. Claude M‘Donald, a member of the Alpine Club, made the first traverse of Malte Brun (10,421 feet), and Mr. L. M. Earle, also a member of the Alpine Club, with three guides, ascended Mount Cook by a new route from the Hooker Valley. The climb was mostly on good rocks, and is probably the easiest and shortest way to the summit of the mountain. Several first ascents of second-class peaks were made. In 1909-10 Captain Head, an Englishman, with guides J. Clark and A. Graham, made the first ascent of Mount Aspiring, and, in company with Mr. L. M. Earle and the same guides, Mount Sefton was ascended for the first time from the western side.

No résumé of the work done in the Southern Alps would be complete without reference to the magnificent survey work and the measurements of glacier flow made by Mr. T. N. Brodrick, C.E., of the New Zealand Survey Department.

Mummery in his delightful book about his climbs in the Alps and Caucasus says, humorously, that a mountain passes through three phases, “An inaccessible peak,” “The most difficult climb in the Alps,” and “An easy day for a lady.” His classification has been proved true in regard to the New Zealand as well as the European Alps, and Mount Cook, which baffled Green and his Swiss experts and the early New Zealand climbers, has now been climbed by two women. Miss Du Faur, a Sydney girl, in 1911 made the ascent by the Hooker Rock route in company with the two guides Peter and Alex. Graham, while Mrs. Lindon, an Englishwoman resident in Australia, a year later, with Peter Graham and D. Thomson, made the ascent of Mount Cook by Green’s more difficult route. The conditions for both ascents were perfect. Miss Du Faur has also climbed Mount Tasman (11,475 feet), Mount Dampier (11,323 feet)—a first ascent—and several other peaks. This season (1912-13), in company with Graham and Thomson, she has succeeded in making a traverse of the three peaks of Mount Cook from a high bivouac on the Hooker side to the bivouac on the Tasman side—a remarkable feat. On this trip the climbers were favoured with glorious weather, and the conditions were also good; otherwise the climb would have been almost hopeless. The writer has looked down the long icy knife edge that, with its bends and steep slopes and cornices, joins the three peaks together, and has realized the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of success, except under ideal conditions. All honour, then, to the two New Zealand guides and the young Australian girl who have accomplished such a daring feat.

In connexion with this brief historical résumé of mountain climbing in New Zealand and looking back over this series of victories, won without a single fatal accident, it remains only to pay a tribute—and it must be a very high tribute—to the members of the Alpine Club, whose precept and example we have so closely followed. When I first started climbing, the Rev. Mr. Green sent me an ice-axe and an article on the death-roll of the Alps! What two more appropriate things could he have forwarded to an amateur anxious to learn the craft in a Far Country? I still have the axe—a treasured possession—but I have long ago lost the article! And it occurs to me, now, that by the reader of these pages it may be laid to our charge that in some of our expeditions we did not err on the side of timidity. My answer to that will be that we were always, or nearly always, doing pioneer work, and so had to discover the dangers as well as the routes, and that, generally, when the weather failed, when the avalanches began to hiss down the slopes or crash from the cliffs, or when the rocks began to fall, we either waited or turned tail and fled. But, in any case, the most critical would, surely, not have had us run no risks at all. He is a poor soul—and there can be no pride of race in him—who will shirk all danger. Two years ago it was my privilege—at the invitation of my friend Lord Islington—to give a lecture at Government House, Wellington, before a famous historian and ambassador who is one of a long line of distinguished presidents of our Club, and, at the close of the lecture, he—in one of those charming speeches which he so easily makes—emphasized the necessity for the caution that I myself had been preaching. But afterwards, at supper, his wife came to me and said, “I like my husband’s preaching to you about caution! Why, when he climbed Ararat his only companion was his ice-axe!” But she said it with a smile, and with what I judged to be a feeling more of pride than of reproach. So you see this fondness for a spice of danger is in the blood, and cannot be altogether eliminated in the old country any more than in the new. And I will even go the length of saying that it will be a sorry day for the race when it is no longer a feature of British character.

Mount Cook has now been climbed by four routes. It has been traversed from east to west over the highest summit, and along the ridge from south to north. The first ascent was made by New Zealanders who had never seen a guide at work, and all the other ascents but one have been made with guides who have learnt their craft, untaught by others, in their native land. All the high peaks have now been climbed, with or without guides, Zurbriggen being the only foreign guide who has ever stood on the summit of a New Zealand Alp. And during all these years there has been no fatal accident to mar the tale of success. But what of the future? It is scarcely to be expected that this immunity from accident will continue indefinitely. There may come a day when some climber, caught in bad weather, or endeavouring to achieve the impossible by some new and more daring route, will meet his fate on the higher snows, or leave his bones among the beetling crags of the great precipices. One can only express the hope that such a day may be long delayed, and that, for many years to come, the steep white slopes, the grim precipices, and the towering peaks will continue as a health-giving playground, and resound with the laughter born of the fun and frolic of the hardy mountaineer. And whatever the future history of these mountains may be, it can scarcely provide a tale of more absorbing interest than is furnished by the manly struggles of the pioneers who have climbed, with some fair measure of success, in a Far Country.