Trout have been introduced, and they are annually hatching 160,000 of salmon ova to be turned into the lake, in the hope that it may become a large industry, as with a freezing apparatus they could be sent home to England. A law was passed that trout were only to be caught with a line, but now they have become so large, weighing from eighteen to twenty pounds, that government is to be petitioned to legalize the already surreptitiously used net.
Wednesday, October 22nd.—We spent a quiet morning, one of the first we have had for a long time, with nothing particular to do but wander along the shore of the lake. The weather looked unpromising and rough for the proposed trip to the head of the lake later on, but it changes here with the wind, which may be said to shift round twenty or thirty times a day—and by the afternoon the lake was calm and the weather bright.
The steamer was late in being signalled, and when she came alongside the jetty there was a flock of sheep to be disembarked, refusing in a body to move, till one was dragged off as a "decoy," when they all followed "like a flock of sheep." Altogether we were two hours late in starting. The captain, the engineer, and the steward, greeted us again as old friends, and we felt quite at home on the Mountaineer.
We had not realized till we got away from Queenstown what a splendid range "the Remarkables" were, with their serrated peaks and depressed edges filled with snow, running in ridges of downwards or crossway lines. The mountains were grander and gloomier, rising to a greater height here than in the lower part of the lake.
The flattened top of the Necklace Mountain forms the landmark where the steamer turns the White Point into the upper end of the lake. We had to go six miles out of our course to land a shepherd on a small pier, throwing his dog overboard to swim after him. The steamer stops wherever it is wanted, and a fire is lighted as a signal on the shore, or two in cases of sickness.
We were very glad of this divergence, because our course took us straight across the lake, in full view of all the glory and beauty of that grand collection of snow domes which shut in the lake at the head.
Monarch above all rose Mount Earnslaw, 9000 feet above the sea level, with his long saddle of pure white snow leading up on the one side to the arrête, and the small conical peak of the summit. The long descent on the other side is formed of innumerable peaks, and curved round in the shape of a circular basin.
Inside this there is a glacier of many thousand acres in extent, from under a glassy portal in whose side issues a stream called the Rees. In the summer, after the snow has melted away, the glacier takes a beautiful lake-green colour, such as those who have seen it affirm is found nowhere else.
Mr. Green gives a most interesting account, in "The High Alps of New Zealand," of his ascent of Mount Earnslaw, but he only accomplished 6000 feet, and was surpassed last summer by Mr. Walker of Dunedin, who made a further ascent of 300 feet. It is wonderful to think of those eternal glaciers and iron-bound peaks, untouched by the foot of man, for ever destined to be beyond his range.
On either side of us were the Humboldt Range and the picturesque Cosmos, with their sides terraced into steps which are supposed to show the different levels of the glacier lake.