On the morning of Sunday the 1st April—rather late in the season—my wife and I said good-bye to our friends at the Hermitage, and started on foot for our camp at the Ball Glacier. It was hard work pulling the two of us across the river in the cage, as the pull to the other side was an upward one; but, after much exertion, and many splinters in my hands from the rough Manila rope, the other side was reached in safety. As we landed, two young fellows from the Hermitage approached and beckoned us to send the cage back across the river to them. This did not exactly suit our book, as, in the event of their taking the cage back with them, we should be stranded on the Tasman side. So we tied it securely to the post on our side of the river, and continued on our journey. But before we had gone very far we were astonished to see one of the young fellows commencing to scramble across the river on the wire rope to get the cage, so that he might take his companion over. One could not help admiring his nerve and daring; but we were more concerned about our own faring should he leave the cage on the wrong side of the river for us. However, we proceeded on our journey, and, after an hour’s march, reached a deserted shepherd’s hut, where we found Annan with a billy of refreshing tea awaiting our arrival.
The hut was rather an uninviting place, being dirty, and having no door nor window, in addition to which it was inhabited by rats. A short council of war was held, and, as it was early in the day, and the walk up the Tasman moraine on the morrow was rather a big undertaking, we decided not to stay at the hut, but to proceed as far as we could, and sleep out in one of the hollows between the glacier and the mountain. Accordingly we started for a point two miles distant, at the edge of the glacier, where Annan and I had left part of our stores on the way up. Having adjusted our swags, we were soon on the march, scrambling over the boulders of the moraine. Our progress was slow, both Annan and myself having heavy swags, while my wife, though displaying great pluck, had not yet got used to the acrobatic feats necessary to the keeping of one’s balance on the unstable boulders of the moraine.
We had a particularly lively time of it in the scrub at the Blue Lake; and my wife’s jacket, which was tied to my swag, had been torn off, and was lost among the bushes.
It was a sweltering hot day, but we toiled on, and towards evening reached the celmesia flat, where Mr. Green had pitched his third camp. My wife was by this time very tired, and so, while I gathered some sticks and made the tea, she sat on a rock wrapped in the ’possum rug. Annan decided to go on to the camp and come down again to have breakfast with us early next morning. We were now close to the ice, and after tea, as it began to get very cold, I set about to look for a good spot for our bivouac. A hundred yards farther on some scrubby totara bushes and a stunted Alpine pine grew close in to the glacier, and under the latter, after a hurried inspection, we decided to camp. Its branches would be some protection against the wind, should it come on to blow, and, in the event of rain, they would also keep us fairly dry. Some branches were cut for a mattress, and over that we put tussock grass. On top of that we spread the waterproof sheet, and lying down on that—with our clothes on, of course—pulled the ’possum rug over us and sought a well-earned repose. We both dozed off, but presently were awakened by a shrill scream. It was only the call of a kea far up the mountain-side. Over the cold white snows on the shoulder of Mount Cook, one solitary cloud hung, fringed with the gold of the setting sun. Later the moon shone brilliantly through the clear frosty air, and the peaks became silhouettes against the horizon. A rock avalanche rattled down the side of the glacier. From across the narrow flat came the cry of the mountain parrot; and a weka that had crept close to our heads under the branches startled us with a loud screech. Then again all was silent—silent as the tomb. Presently two other visitors made a friendly call upon us: two tiny wrens—absurd little things, with hardly the vestige of tails. They perched on the branches just over our heads, so close that we could have ruffled their feathers with our breath. They hopped about from twig to twig, speaking to us in their soft, low bird voices; and, having studied us from every point of the compass, they decided to give us up, and went off to roost in a totara bush. At last we also went to sleep, and, making due allowance for the hardness of our couch and the strange surroundings, managed to get a fairly good night’s rest. When we awoke in the morning the frost lay white on the bushes around us, save within a radius of a foot or two, where the heat from our bodies had melted it, or prevented it from forming. The temperature had fallen to 26° Fahr. On the way up we took down a reading of 80° in the shade, so that there was thus a drop of no less than 54° in a few hours! I was astir before sunrise, and on going back to the Blue Lake for water to boil the billy the garrulous Paradise ducks gave me a vituperative reception, while the solitary mountain duck quacked a milder remonstrance. A shot from my pistol made them think discretion the better part of valour, and while the Paradise ducks took wing the grey duck scuttled off down stream in a great hurry. After a short search, I found my wife’s jacket frozen hard to the bushes, and, filling my billy, returned to the flat. On the way up I gave a jodel that was answered by Annan far up the moraine, and in a few minutes he had rejoined us. We breakfasted together, and shortly after 9.30 were once more on the march. All the way up the valley we had been getting glorious glimpses of the Mount Cook chain, and De la Bêche, with its sharp peak and minarets of spotless snow, seemed to be ever beckoning us onward. Towering in the distance above the dull grey line of the great moraine, gleaming gloriously in the sunshine of early morn, tinted with the soft rose of the after-glow, or looming coldly in the mystic moonlight, this mountain seemed ever beautiful in outline, majestic in form. Even the moraine was interesting, clothed as it was, in places, with a great variety of Alpine plants, while structurally it was always something to marvel at, if not to swear at.
“It is,” says Dr. von Lendenfeld, “larger than the moraines are in the European Alps, the cause being the slower action of the New Zealand glaciers, and the peculiarity of the rocks which surround them. There are very few places to be found where the rocks are so jointed as they are here. They are split along the different joints into polyhedric masses by freezing water; they fall on the glacier and are carried down the valley. Ceteris paribus, the slower the glacier moves the more moraine will accumulate. For miles no part of the glacier is visible through the moraine.” The glacier does not block up the whole valley, there being quite a large space between it and the mountain-side, except, in places, where great talus fans come down from the corries to meet the live moraine of the glacier. Far away on the right were the rocky peaks and hanging glaciers of the Liebig and Malte Brun Ranges, and in between them the Murchison Glacier, once a tributary of the Tasman, but now shrunken up its own valley for a considerable distance.
On our left we passed a high waterfall, and, nearing a spot known as the Cove, came across a small iron stove—a relic of the Lendenfeld expedition, abandoned early in the journey as being, no doubt, a luxury too heavy to be carried over this rough ground. We had a rest at the Cove, and whiled away half an hour with a shooting match, in which my wife proved herself a good markswoman. A little farther on we had luncheon—bread and sardines, with a pannikin of tea, again being the bill of fare. After this, there was some difficult scrambling over great rocks, many of which were so loose that we dare not put our weight on them for more than a second. We toiled on in the heat of the afternoon, and reached the camp at half-past three o’clock. While I pitched the second tent Annan and my wife set about the camp cookery, the latter making a glorious stew from mutton and onions, with a few other ingredients. That was twenty-three years ago, but the memory of the feast remains with us still. No French chef ever made ragout that was welcomed so eagerly, or that disappeared so quickly. That night we piled on all the clothes we could—in addition to those we had on. We could hear the rocks rattling down the face of the glacier just opposite our tent—a couple of hundred yards distant—but King Frost held the glaciers themselves in his cold grip, and there were no avalanches after nightfall. Being too tired to pay much attention to the screaming of the keas, we soon fell asleep.
CHAPTER III
IN THE OLDEN DAYS—concluded
“We walked in the great hall of life, looking up and around reverentially. Nothing was despicable—all was meaning-full; nothing was small, but as part of a whole whose beginning and end we knew not.”—Carlyle.