‘Fresh fields and pastures new.’
I had often cast a longing eye in the direction of the Murchison Valley, and desired to explore those unvisited scenes which were as yet unknown and unseen by man. We had frequently during this visit to the district spoken of making an excursion in that direction should Mount Cook prove too heavy metal for us. Now was our chance, and we determined to take it.
Leaving the Hermitage with an addition to our party in the shape of Messrs. Wells, Timson, and Hamilton—the former two only intending to visit the Tasman Glacier, and the latter anxious to accompany us on the Murchison trip—we made the Ball Glacier camp, after the usual hard, hot grind over the moraine, by evening.
The next morning breaking fine, Wells and Timson went for an hour’s excursion on to the glacier opposite, returning enchanted with the grand view of the Hochstetter ice-fall and the surrounding peaks, whilst the rest of us—viz. Harper, Hamilton, Annan, and myself—prepared swags for a two days’ excursion up the Murchison Valley, whose mouth could be discerned some two miles distant across the Tasman Glacier.
It is a fact worthy of notice that with the exception of mountaineering parties equipped for climbing—and the numbers of these could be counted on the fingers of both hands—Messrs. Wells and Timson were the first two tourists to venture so far up the Tasman as our camp, and since that time only one other has succeeded in reaching the same point, that gentleman being his Excellency the Earl of Onslow, Governor of the colony, whose practical penetration regarding all matters connected with New Zealand entitles him to the respect and gratitude of those subjects over whom he exercises vice-regal control.
Since the visit of Lord Onslow a track which had then been formed within two or three miles of the Ball Glacier has been completed, making the task of reaching the spot one of comparative ease and pleasure. Further conveniences for tourists and mountaineers in the shape of tracks and huts are now in course of construction by a far-seeing Government, who recognise the fact that New Zealand is fast becoming the playground of Australasia and the Switzerland of the South.
From careful inquiries made at the Survey Office, from Mr. Sealy—a gentleman whose early work of exploration amongst the New Zealand glaciers is too readily forgotten—and from the run-holders and station hands in the district, we had every reason to believe that the valley had only once been entered (by Mr. Burnett of Mount Cook sheep station), and that the face of the glacier had never been reached; only in one case could we hear of the clear ice having been seen—viz., by a shepherd of Mr. Burnett’s from a peak of the Liebig range.
There was therefore little or no doubt that we had a virgin field before us, and it was with feelings of intense eagerness that we pressed forward across the moraine-covered part of the Tasman Glacier, and up the shingle flats of the river-bed beyond, towards that massive, moraine-covered terminal face which fills the valley from side to side, five miles from the eastern lateral face of the Tasman Glacier.
The valley appeared to be a little over one mile in width. On either hand rose up most beautifully grassed slopes thickly covered with every variety of sub-Alpine foliage decked in the gayest height of blossom.
What a place for an artist’s holiday! Flowers innumerable dotted amongst the richest shades of green—lilies, celmisias in great variety, Spaniards of many kinds with their golden and spiky heads of various shapes and sizes, from the orange-coloured dwarf to the great blue Spaniard with stalks occasionally ten feet in height; snow-grass with its graceful seed-stalks gently waving in the morning zephyr, which seemed to fan all Nature into a soft and dreamy repose—such wealth of colour, such variety of form, such grandeur of outline in the looming peaks above!