IN THE HOOKER VALLEY
At its worst, however, the eastern region may claim to be serviceable to the lover of scenery as well as to the sheep-farmer. Its thinly-grassed slopes, bare rocks, and fan-shaped shingle-slips furnish, at any rate, a foil to the grandeur of the central range and the luxuriance of the west. It is, indeed, not easy to believe that such glaciers and passes, such lakes and sea-gulfs, lie beyond the stern barrier, and the enjoyment, when wonderland is penetrated, is all the greater. For the rest, any English reader who cares to feel himself among our tussock-clad ranges will find a masterly sketch of them and their atmosphere in the first chapters of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. Butler’s sheep-station, “Mesopotamia” by name, lay among the alps of Canterbury, and the satirist himself did some exploring work in his pastoral days, work concerning which I recall a story told me by an old settler whom I will call the Sheriff. This gentleman, meeting Butler one day in Christchurch in the early sixties, noticed that his face and neck were burned to the colour of red-chocolate. “Hullo, my friend,” said he, “you have been among the snow!” “Hush!” answered Butler in an apprehensive whisper, and looking round the smoking-room nervously, “how do you know that?” “By the colour of your face; nothing more,” was the reply. They talked a while, and Butler presently admitted that he had been up to the dividing range and had seen a great sight away beyond it. “I’ve found a hundred thousand acres of ‘country,’” said he. “Naturally I wish you to keep this quiet till I have proved it and applied to the Government for a pastoral licence.” “Well, I congratulate you,” said the Sheriff. “If it will carry sheep you’ve made your fortune, that’s all”; but he intimated his doubts as to whether the blue expanse seen from far off could be grass country. And indeed, when next he met Butler, the latter shook his head ruefully: “You were quite right; it was all bush.” I have often wondered whether that experience was the basis of the passage that tells of the thrilling discovery of Erewhon beyond the pass guarded by the great images.
In one of his letters about the infant Canterbury settlement Butler gives a description of Aorangi, or Mount Cook, which, so far as I know, is the earliest sketch of the mountain by a writer of note. It was, however, not an Englishman, but a German man of science, Sir Julius von Haast, who published the first careful and connected account of the Southern Alps. Von Haast was not a mountaineer, but a geologist, and though he attacked Aorangi, he did not ascend more than two-thirds of it. But he could write, and had an eye for scenery as well as for strata. The book which he published on the geology of Canterbury and Westland did very much the same service to the Southern Alps that von Hochstetter’s contemporary work did for the hot lakes. The two German savants brought to the knowledge of the world outside two very different but remarkable regions. It is true that the realm of flowery uplands, glaciers, ice-walls, and snow-fields told of by von Haast, had nothing in it so uncommon as the geysers and so strange as the pink and white terraces made familiar by von Hochstetter. But the higher Southern Alps, when once you are among them, may fairly challenge comparison with those of Switzerland. Their elevation is not equal by two or three thousand feet, but the lower level of their snow-line just about makes up the disparity. Then, too, on the flanks of their western side the mountains of the south have a drapery of forest far more varied and beautiful than the Swiss pine woods. On the western side, too, the foot of the mountain rampart is virtually washed by the ocean. Take the whole mountain territory of the south-west with its passes, lakes, glaciers, river-gorges, and fiords, and one need not hesitate to assert that it holds its own when compared with what Nature has done in Switzerland, Savoy, and Dauphiny.
MOUNT COOK
Aorangi, with its 12,349 feet, exceeds the peak of Teneriffe by 159 feet. It is the highest point in our islands, for Mount Tasman, its neighbour, which comes second, fails to equal it by 874 feet. Only two or three other summits surpass 11,000 feet, and the number which attain to anything over 10,000 is not great. From the south-west, Aorangi, with the ridge attached to it, resembles the high-pitched roof of a Gothic church with a broad, massive spire standing up from the northern end. When, under strong sunlight, the ice glitters on the steep crags, and the snow-fields, unearthly in their purity, contrast with the green tint of the crawling glaciers, the great mountain is a spectacle worthy of its fame. Yet high and shapely as it is, and worthy of its name, Cloud-in-the-Heavens, it is not the most beautiful mountain in the islands. That honour may be claimed by Egmont, just as Tongariro may demand precedence as the venerated centre of Maori reverence and legend. Nor, formidable as Aorangi looks, is it, I should imagine, as impracticable as one or two summits farther south, notably Mount Balloon. However, unlike Kosciusko in Australia, it is a truly imposing height, and worthy of its premier place. With it the story of New Zealand alpine-climbing has been bound up for a quarter of a century, and such romance as that story has to show is chiefly found in attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to reach the topmost point of Aorangi. Canterbury had been settled for thirty-two years before the first of these was made. For the low snow-line, great cliffs, and enormous glaciers of the Southern Alps have their especial cause of origin. They bespeak an extraordinary steepness in the rock faces, and a boisterous climate with rapid and baffling changes of temperature. Not a climber or explorer amongst them but has been beaten back at times by tempests, or held a prisoner for many hours, listening through a sleepless night to the howling of north-west or south-west wind—lucky if he is not drenched to the skin by rain or flood. As for the temperature, an observer once noted a fall of fifty-three degrees in a few hours. On the snow-fields the hot sun blisters the skin of your face and neck, and even at a lower level makes a heavy coat an intolerable burden; but the same coat—flung impatiently on the ground and left there—may be picked up next morning frozen as stiff as a board. These extremes of heat and cold, these sudden and furious gales, are partly, I imagine, the cause of the loose and rotten state of much of the rock-surface, of the incessant falls of stones, ice-blocks, and snow, and of the number and size of the avalanches. At any rate, the higher alps showed a front which, to ordinary dwellers on our plains, seemed terrific, and which even gave pause to mountain-climbers of some Swiss experience. So even von Haast’s book did not do much more than increase the number of visitors to the more accessible glaciers and sub-alpine valleys. The spirit of mountaineering lay dormant year after year, and it was not until 1882 that an unexpected invader from Europe delivered the sudden and successful stroke that awoke it. The raider was Mr. Green, an Irish clergyman, who, with two Swiss guides, Boss and Kaufmann, landed in the autumn of 1882. His object was the ascent of Aorangi; he had crossed the world to make it. He found our inner mountains just as Nature had left them, and, before beginning his climb, had to leave human life behind, and camp at the foot of the mountain with so much of the resources of civilisation as he could take with him. One of his first encounters with a New Zealand river in a hurry ended in the loss of his light cart, which was washed away. Its wrecked and stranded remains lay for years in the river-bed a battered relic of a notable expedition. To cap his troubles, a pack-horse carrying flour, tea, sugar, and spare clothing, coolly lay down when fording a shallow torrent, and rolled on its back—and therefore on its pack—in the rapid water. Ten days of preliminary tramping and clambering, during which five separate camps were formed, only carried the party with their provisions and apparatus to a height of less than 4000 feet above the sea. They had toiled over moraine boulders, been entangled in dense and prickly scrubs, and once driven back by a fierce north-wester. On the other hand the scenery was glorious and the air exhilarating. Nothing round them seemed tame except the wild birds. Keas, wekas, and blue ducks were as confiding and fearless as our birds are wont to be till man has taught them distrust and terror. Among these the Swiss obtained the raw material of a supper almost as easily as in a farmyard. On the 25th of February the final ascent was begun. But Aorangi did not yield at the first summons. Days were consumed in futile attempts from the south and east. On their first day they were checked by finding themselves on a crumbling knife-like ridge, from which protruded spines of rock that shook beneath their tread. A kick, so it seemed, would have sent the surface into the abyss on either side. The bridge that leads to the Mahometan paradise could not be a more fearful passage. Two days later they were baffled on the east side by walls of rock from which even Boss and Kaufmann turned hopelessly away. It was not until March 2, after spending a night above the clouds, that they hit upon a new glacier, the Linda, over which they found a winding route to the north-eastern ridge which joins Cook to Tasman. The day’s work was long and severe, and until late in the afternoon the issue was doubtful. A gale burst upon them from the north-west, and they had to go on through curling mists and a wind that chilled them to the bone. It was six o’clock in the evening when they found themselves standing on the icy scalp of the obstinate mountain, and even then they did not attain the highest point. There was not a moment to lose if they were to regain some lower point of comparative security; for March is the first month of autumn in South New Zealand, and the evenings then begin to draw in. So Mr. Green had to retreat when within either a few score feet or a few score yards of the actual goal. As it was, night closed in on the party when they were but a short way down, and they spent the dark hours on a ledge less than two feet wide, high over an icy ravine. Sleep or faintness alike meant death. They stood there hour after hour singing, stamping, talking, and listening to the rain pattering on rock and hissing on snow. All night long the wind howled: the wall at their backs vibrated to the roar of the avalanches: water streaming down its face soaked their clothing. For food they had three meat lozenges each. They sucked at empty pipes, and pinched and nudged each other to drive sleep away. By the irony of fate it happened that close beneath them were wide and almost comfortable shelves. But night is not the time to wander about the face of a precipice, looking for sleeping berths, 10,000 feet above the sea. Mr. Green and his guides were happy to escape with life and limb, and not to have to pay such a price for victory as was paid by Whymper’s party after scaling the Matterhorn.
Mr. Green’s climb, the tale of which is told easily in his own bright and workmanlike book, gave an enlivening shock to young New Zealand. It had been left to a European to show them the way; but the lesson was not wasted. They now understood that mountains were something more than rough country, some of which carried sheep, while some did not. They learned that they had an alpine playground equal to any in the Old World—a new realm where danger might be courted and exploits put on record. The dormant spirit of mountaineering woke up at last. Many difficulties confronted the colonial lads. They had everything to learn and no one to teach them. Without guides, equipment, or experience—without detailed maps, or any preliminary smoothing of the path, they had to face unforeseen obstacles and uncommon risks. They had to do everything for themselves. Only by endangering their necks could they learn the use of rope and ice-axe. Only by going under fire, and being grazed or missed by stones and showers of ice, could they learn which hours of the day and conditions of the weather were most dangerous, and when slopes might be sought and when ravines must be shunned. They had to teach themselves the trick of the glissade and the method of crossing frail bridges of snow. Appliances they could import from Europe. As for guides, some of them turned guides themselves. Of course they started with a general knowledge of the climate, of “roughing it” in the hills, and of life in the open. They could scramble to the heights to which sheep scramble, and could turn round in the wilderness without losing their way. Thews and sinews, pluck and enthusiasm, had to do the rest, and gradually did it. As Mr. Malcolm Ross, one of the adventurous band, has pointed out with legitimate pride, their experience was gained and their work done without a single fatal accident—a happy record, all the more striking by contrast with the heavy toll of life levied by the rivers of our mountain territory. The company of climbers, therefore, must have joined intelligence to resolution, for, up to the present, they have broken nothing but records. Mr. Mannering, one of the earliest of them, attacked Aorangi five times within five years. After being thwarted by such accidents as rain-storms, the illness of a companion, and—most irritating of all—the dropping of a “swag” holding necessaries, he, with his friend Mr. Dixon, at last attained to the ice-cap in December 1890. Their final climb was a signal exhibition of courage and endurance. They left their bivouac (7480 feet in air) at four o’clock in the morning, and, after nine hours of plodding upward in soft snow had to begin the labour of cutting ice-steps. In the morning they were roasted by the glaring sun; in the shade of the afternoon their rope and coats were frozen stiff, and the skin from their hands stuck to the steel of their ice-axes. Dixon, a thirteen-stone man, fell through a snow-wreath, and was only saved by a supreme effort. Pelted by falling ice the two amateurs cut their way onward, and at half-past five in the evening found themselves unscathed and only about a hundred feet below the point gained by Mr. Green and his Swiss. They made an effort to hew steps up to the apex of the ice-cap, but time was too short and the wind was freshening; as it was they had to work their way down by lantern light. Now they had to creep backwards, now to clean out the steps cut in the daylight; now their way was lost, again they found it, and discovered that some gulf had grown wider. They did not regain their bivouac till nearly three in the morning after twenty-three hours of strain to body and mind.[4]
[4] For Mr. Mannering’s narrative see With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps, London, 1891.
