Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/146

114 spot from which reverberates a dull incessant boom. Here, with a last frolic in the sunshine, the blue water vanishes, leaping down a great moulin to the unplumbed depths of its prison beneath the ice, to emerge again far away at the terminal face of the moraine as the Tasman River.

Crossing this stream, we made our way out of the cañon and up to the hummocky ice, along which our route lay for the next few hours. Ahead of us the glacier sweeps on, mile after mile of glistening ice, which rises in a grand curve between the foot of Mount De la Bêche and Malte Brun point. As we proceeded the sun beat down upon us from a cloudless sky, and its rays were reflected back from the glistening glacier until we were enveloped in a world of heat and light. As we neared De la Bêche, the crevasses became wider and more frequent, until we found ourselves in the thick of the icefall, and wandered in and out amongst the gaping chasms, threading our way along the narrow ridges until at last we emerged on the névé above. Here the sun had done its work, and we floundered along in soft snow up to our knees. One last struggle took us over the lateral moraine and up the steep path to the Malte Brun hut. This last 300 feet is apt to prove a discouraging ending to the weary traveller, depriving him of what little energy he has left; after rest and refreshment, however, he is usually willing to concede that his labours have not been in vain. It would indeed be hard to find a more beautiful and picturesque situation than that on which this little alpine hut is perched. From the platform in front of it you look away over slopes of waving snow-grass, the bronze green of which frames the white mountains with wonderful softness. Beneath winds the Tasman Glacier, rising in gracious curves for mile after mile, at its head smoothly soft and shining, but lower down seamed and broken with crevasses, its whiteness marred by the long black streaks of the lateral moraines. On either side tower the greatest peaks