Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/30

 and vary the monotony with trips abroad? As a matter of fact, the men in New Zealand who do climb, with few exceptions, are poor men—men who have but one short holiday a year and save so that they may spend it mountaineering. When I think of the men who live in the South Island, and read in their newspapers the accounts of climbs as they are accomplished, and more particularly the men whose homes are within sight of the mountains, on the great sheep stations that extend to the very base of the Mount Cook range, their want of energy and interest does seem rather appalling. It argues for one thing such a lamentable lack of imagination.

This subject came up for discussion one night, and some one suggested that the young colonial is not intellectual enough to appreciate mountaineering, that he has not sufficient resources within himself to be happy away from his kind. He loves physical exercise, but he likes it in company and before an admiring audience, as on the football field and tennis ground. When, following out this argument, one pauses to consider who were the men who first took up climbing in the Swiss Alps, and who continue to do so to this day, it is at once evident that they are mainly members of the scholastic professions. Nor can one deny that as well as splendid physical exercise they do find intellectual enjoyment; in fact, it is this very combining of the physical and intellectual that makes mountaineering the finest sport in the world. Being a colonial myself, I do not like to hear my countrymen and women considered unintellectual and unimaginative, but if it is the case by all means let us know it and so be able to take some steps towards a remedy.