Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/279

Rh to take photographs of the hotel surrounded by the flood. Presently Graham returned, accompanied by Duncan and the milk-pails. I was promptly hustled over the torrent because the bank was being washed away. Having once tasted excitement I flatly declined to go in, and as nobody else seemed to want rescuing, I suggested to Graham that we might go up to Kea Point and investigate the cause of all this trouble and try for some photographs. We waded through water up to our waists on the road to the left of the pond, and made across the flats for the new river. It had already cut itself a channel half as big as the Hooker, and was racing down, bringing with it moraine, blocks of ice, uprooted trees, and shrubs. It was still raining hard, but I tried some time exposures, and then we went on. Twice I had to be carried across side streams, where the water was running so swiftly that my additional weight helped Graham to keep his feet. We battled along inexpressibly wet, but cheerful, and eventually reached the Muller Moraine. In fine weather there is a tiny lake at the junction of the Kea Point and the old grass-covered moraine beside which the Hermitage is built. This lake is usually only a few feet deep, and sometimes dries up altogether. The last fortnight's deluge, besides being of considerable volume itself, was a warm rain that had melted the snow in all directions; these conditions caused the lake, which is a well that receives a large portion of the drainage of the Muller Moraine, to rise about 20 feet, then the pressure of the water burst the bank of moraine separating the lake from the valley, and came down as described. Above the lake the sides of the next wave of moraine were washed to a clear wall of ice, through the cracks of which water was gushing in every direction; but the main stream came from round Sealy Point and was the drainage from the head of the glacier. We