AND CHEERED US IN DEFEAT
PREFACE
Some of the material contained in the following pages appeared in the London Times. My thanks are due to the manager for allowing me to republish it. Articles that have appeared in the Alpine Journal and in some of the leading Australian and New Zealand newspapers—notably the Otago Daily Times, the Christchurch Press, the Wellington Post, the New Zealand Times, the New Zealand Herald, the Melbourne Age, and the Australasian—have also been used. These articles have all been re-written or revised. I am indebted to Dr. Teichelman for the interesting illustration facing page 296, and to the Otago Witness for the photograph of the Rev. Mr. Green, Boss, and Kaufmann. The other illustrations are from my own photographs. My thanks are also due to Mr. A. L. Mumm, late Secretary of the Alpine Club, and author of Five Months in the Himalaya, for the special interest he has taken in the publication of this book. Finally, I must record my great indebtedness to Lord Bryce, the distinguished Author and Ambassador, and a former President of the Alpine Club, for the charming introductory note that he has written.
M. R.
London,
February 7, 1914.
PREFATORY NOTE
BY THE RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT BRYCE
On the west side of the Southern Island of New Zealand there rises from the sea a magnificent mass of snowy mountains, whose highest peak, Aorangi or Mount Cook, reaches an elevation of 12,347 feet. Some of the loftiest summits are visible in the far distance from the railway which runs down the east coast of the island from Christchurch to Dunedin, but to appreciate the full grandeur of the range it must be seen either from out at sea or from points north of it on the west coast. The view from the seaport of Greymouth on that coast, nearly a hundred miles from Aorangi, is not only one of the finest mountain views which the world affords, but is almost unique as a prospect of a long line of snows rising right out of an ocean. One must go to North-Western America, or to the Caucasus where it approaches the Euxine, north of Poti, or possibly to Kamschatka (of which I cannot speak from personal knowledge), to find peaks so high which have the full value of their height, because they spring directly from the sea. The Andes are of course loftier, but they stand farther back from the shore, and they are seldom well seen from it.