More than 8,000 feet above us were built up those ice-clad precipices, their glaciers glinting in the bright morning light, their avalanches tearing down the mountain sides and waking the echoes of a hundred ravines and valleys with their thunder.
Where is the man who can describe these
palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps?
Where is the mountaineer—not the mere gymnast, but the Nature-loving mountaineer—who can tell the feelings of such a first impression?
And yet even this scene seems to fade in the memory and suffer by contrast with those of other pictures in the New Zealand Alps, for up the Tasman Valley, where later on in the day we wended our way, fresh vistas of Alpine glory were unfolded to view.
Aorangi from the Hermitage is also a grand sight. The mountain seems to possess a startling individuality and a majestic grandeur somewhat different in character from its worthy neighbour Mount Sefton. The view is more distant, but the bold outline of the peak stands out in relief against the blue of the heavens, and rears a face of glacier-clad precipices to a height of 10,000 feet above the Hooker Valley at the mountain foot. Light clouds float about the peak and lend an ethereal air to its beauty, imparting a fairy-like, floating appearance to the peak itself. At other times the outlines are apparently clear cut against the sky, giving an air of lasting and monumental dignity, and conveying the idea of stability from past ages to ages to come.
After an early lunch, and accompanied by Mr. Huddleston (the landlord of the Hermitage), and one of his men, we started off for the Tasman Glacier. The first part of the way leads down over stony flats to the termination of the Mount Cook Range, and at this point the Hooker River is crossed.
On this occasion we double-banked over on horse-back without much difficulty; but very often the Hooker River is quite impassable with horses, the torrent being confined in a narrow boulder bed of about 200 feet in width, which in flood time, during the warmer months of spring and summer, is quite filled with a roaring torrent, often bearing down with it blocks of ice from the Mueller and Hooker Glaciers above.