Strenuous through day, and unsurprised by night,
He runs a race with Time and wins the race.”
Christina Rossetti.
I had been in the hands of my doctor, and had made a good recovery. It was not surprising, therefore, that with renewed health and summer suns there should fall upon me that irresistible longing for the mountains that so often comes across the dreary miles to the city man. In imagination I was already drinking in the champagne air of those higher lands, and seeing, in my mind’s eye, the ever-changing scenes of the Southern Alps. But I had given up all hopes of a climb that year. A week or two later, Mr. Samuel Turner, F.R.G.S., of England, appeared upon the scene and asked Fyfe and myself to join him in an expedition to the Mount Cook district. I was doubtful about attempting big work, so I went back to my doctor. He thumped me in various places, listened carefully to certain interior organs that it is generally supposed should be in good working order for climbing, and said, “Go: it will do you good.” That settled it; though I believe if the doctor had said “No,” I should have gone all the same. Turner and Fyfe had a week’s start of me, and, before I could shake off the shackles of the city, they were already at the Hermitage.
Our coach had a full load of passengers, and the accommodation along the line of route was sorely taxed. “Very comfortable in the laundry,” one man had written in the visitors’ book, and this entry was indicative of the general crush, for there was truth as well as sarcasm in the sentence. Both this hostelry and the one at Mount Cook were in the hands of the Tourist Department, and, like most Government enterprises of the kind, were a dismal failure. Tourists, or the majority of them, do not have votes, and what matters efficiency under a Liberal Government if votes cannot be counted? Much better expend the needed money in some other place where the ballot box looms larger on the political horizon. Vox populi, vox Dei!
The views along the lake-side as we drove towards Aorangi in the early morning were very beautiful, and it was pleasing to note a considerable increase in the bird-life of this region, because as a general rule the feathered tribe of a colony has to bear the brunt of the colonist’s gun. Swan, Paradise and grey duck seemed to abound, while the strutting pukaki, the perky red-bill, and the ubiquitous seagull were also in evidence. As the coach pulled up at the Hermitage, Turner and Fyfe appeared in the doorway. They had attempted the ascent of Mount Sealy in a nor’-wester, and, as was only to be expected, had failed.
Two days later we left the Hermitage and walked up the Tasman Valley, fourteen miles, to the Ball Glacier Hut. Clark, Graham, and Green, of the Hermitage staff, who were packing provisions to the huts, came with us. The skilful way in which Clark managed this portion of his duties was evident even to a novice in the art of transport in rough country. He had reduced it to a science, and, though he declared that the dreadful Hooker River would one day be the death of him, he continued year after year successfully to make these packing pilgrimages with the horses across swollen streams and moraines and avalanche débris to the Ball Glacier Hut, and thence, without horses, over the solid hummocky and crevassed ice to the Malte Brun Hut, far up the Great Tasman Glacier.
The huts were now very comfortable, and I could not help contrasting the changes that had been made since my wife and I first pitched our tent in this rocky wilderness sixteen years before, and carried tents, blankets, and provisions on our own backs along the crumbling moraine and up the trackless valley. We passed the spot where we had bivouacked under the stunted pine tree, and a screech from an impudent kea on the moraine recalled the fact that in those days a slight detour would have been made in order to get him for the pot. Now the keas are preserved to amuse the tourists, and the chief guide, with wonderful celerity, will produce you a four-course dinner that is warranted to satisfy even a Mount Cook appetite. It is true that coloured oilcloth takes the place of spotless damask, and that soups, entrees, etc., are evolved from the mysterious contents of gaudily labelled tins. Nevertheless, after a hard day’s tramp, one is apt to consider it a banquet fit for a king. There is a story current—and it is quite a true one—of two tourists who finished a four-course wine dinner at the Ball Glacier Hut with black coffee and cigars, after which one, looking at the unusual surroundings, remarked quite seriously to his companion, “Bai Jove! We are roughing it, aren’t we?”
Next day we walked up the glacier to the Malte Brun Hut, which we found half buried in snow. A week before it was quite covered, and Clark and Green, coming up with some tourists, had to dig their way down to the door, while inside the hut six candles had to be kept burning all day to give light. Our party was bent on the conquest of Elie de Beaumont, but a storm came up from the north-west, and a heavy fall of snow put climbing out of the question for some days. We decided to retreat to the Ball Hut, and walked down the glacier in the dying storm, the gaunt precipices of the Malte Brun Range looming darkly through the mists, while the murmuring of waterfalls and the roaring of avalanches were borne on the winds across the floor of the glacier.
On Christmas Eve, the weather having cleared, we packed up tent, sleeping bags and provisions, and started across the Tasman Glacier and the Murchison Valley, for a climb on the Liebig Range. Our objective was the Nun’s Veil, a mountain of about 9000 feet. It occupies a commanding position on the range, and Fyfe and I had often expressed a desire to climb it for the sake of the splendid views likely to be obtained. It was a hot walk across the glacier, here almost entirely covered with morainic débris. A solitary kea from the flanks of the Malte Brun Range came and screeched at us, daring us to enter his demesne; but we heeded not his eldritch cries, and descended into the Murchison Valley, the upper portion of which is filled with a fine glacier drawing its supply of ice from an area of 14,000 acres. The Murchison River coming from this eight-mile-long glacier barred our way, but we doffed our nether garments and crossed it in comfort in the garb of Old Gaul. Camp was pitched close to a waterfall that came down in a series of leaps and cascades for fully two thousand feet. It was a most interesting corner. The billy was boiled and supper served round a blazing fire, after which we turned into our sleeping bags inside the Whymper tent.