Next morning, though the barometer had fallen ominously, Annan and I set out to climb the Hochstetter Dome. We toiled across the crumbling moraines of the Tasman, the Ball, and the Hochstetter Glaciers, and gained the clear, hummocky ice of the latter—one of the finest sights in the Southern Alps. It issues forth from the great ice plateau at the foot of the higher precipices of Mount Cook, descending in a wonderful cascade of broken ice for over 3000 feet. It cuts into the Tasman at an angle of about 45 degrees, and, the two glaciers flowing onward and not pressing very closely together, there remains a deep chasm between them. After proceeding a few miles, we find that there are two series of crevasses—one formed by the pressure of the Hochstetter Glacier causing the ice on the western side to move faster than that portion of the glacier abutting on the Malte Brun Range, while another series is caused by the bending round of the main ice stream in a grand sweep between Malte Brun and De la Bêche, forming long crevasses which run across the glacier on its convex side.

The sun shone out brightly, and the glare from the white ice was so dazzling that we had to keep on our goggles to avoid snow-blindness. A little beyond the Hochstetter Ice Fall we halted to admire the view. Down the valley we could see the lower part of the Ball Glacier. Right in front lay the gleaming ice slopes and dark precipices of Aorangi, towering up, and culminating in the tent-shaped ridge 8000 feet above us; and down from the great ice plateau, between the south-eastern spur of Mount Cook and the Tasman spur, the Hochstetter Ice Fall poured its beautifully coloured cascade of broken ice, in spires and cubes and pinnacles—a wonderful sight—till it joined the Tasman, on which we now stood. Every few minutes great masses of ice were broken off with the superincumbent pressure, and went thundering down with loud roar over a precipice on the left. Half a mile farther on was the Freshfield Glacier, and over the bold rocky spur on which it rested appeared the ice cap of Mount Tasman. Then came the glorious mass of the Haast Glacier, in sunshine and shadow; and beyond this again other glaciers and peaks in bewildering number and variety. The ruddy buttresses of the Malte Brun Range bounded the view across the glacier on the right. Words fail to do justice to a scene of such exquisite beauty and grandeur.

“I tried vainly,” says the Rev. Mr. Green, “to recall the view in Switzerland on the Great Aletsch Glacier in front of the Concordia Hut to establish some standard for comparison. Then I tried the Görner Glacier, on the way to Monte Rosa, but the present scene so completely asserted its own grandeur that we all felt compelled to confess in that instant that it surpassed anything we had ever beheld!”

While we were gazing the clouds increased, and a chill wind sprang up. The higher peaks were becoming obscured in the clouds. It was evident that a storm was brewing. It would have been madness to tackle the Hochstetter Dome, so we left our swags behind, and, taking only the ice-axes and the rope, made a bolt for De la Bêche, to see what we could of the upper portion of the glacier. We made good progress over hummocky ice, and at last, when opposite De la Bêche, obtained a glimpse of the Lendenfeld Saddle. A fine unnamed glacier coming from the shoulder of Mount Spencer I named the Forrest Glacier, after my wife, who, by her pluck and endurance, had conquered all the difficulties that lay between us and the enjoyment of this scene of Alpine grandeur. Then we took a last longing look at the glorious amphitheatre of mountains, and, turning our faces campward, beat a hasty retreat. It was a pleasant surprise to my wife to see us back in camp that afternoon. But I had better let her tell her own story.

“In the morning,” she writes, “I was wakened by Annan’s stentorian voice giving vent to a poetic and sentimental ditty, of which the following is the only verse he ever favoured us with:—

‘There’s the lion in his lair,

And the North Polar bear,

And the birds in the greenwood tree,

And the pretty little rabbits,

So engaging in their habits—