Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/272

208 expedition. Theirs is the real triumph: they planned and thought out and led the expedition to a triumphant finish; their knowledge and hard-won experience, their courage and endurance made it possible. I have been accused of being hard on the New Zealand climber in an earlier chapter of this book; if I have been, it is because my admiration and belief in the New Zealand guides is so great that I fail to understand how, with such men ready and waiting to lead them, the average climber remains so unenthusiastic and unenterprising. If my friend's comparison of Mount Cook holds good, I think it may be carried farther, and extend to the small but splendid body of New Zealanders who have from sheer love of the life become professional guides. I doubt if anywhere in the world finer men will be found. They are pioneers, these daring colonials, exploring their own country, learning by hard experience what generations of teaching has made comparatively simple for the European guide. Twenty years ago a few English mountaineers gave them a lead, taught them the use of ice-axe and rope, and to-day there is hardly a mountain in New Zealand up which they have not found a route. Some day, if my dreams come true, I hope to tackle some of the giants of the Himalayas, and I ask no better fate than to be led up them by one of my New Zealand guides. I am sure they would serve me as splendidly there as in their own land, having all the resource and adaptability of the best type of the colonial man.