Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/109

Rh breathless anxiety we wondered if it would stop, or whether it would take the slope to the Hochstetter ice-fall on the one hand, or the Freshfield on the other. One little effort more it appeared to make, and then away it went, careering down again towards the Freshfield ice-fall below.

Our hopes were shattered, and we were fast giving vent to expressions of despair when the career of the swag was suddenly cut short in a partially filled bergschrund, where it was brought up in some soft snow.

We dared not risk staying out for the night where we were without the lost swag, for no rocks affording any shelter were available, so determined, after making a little further progress to get a view of the plateau, to return to our bivouac at 7,400 feet—about 1,200 or 1,400 feet below our present altitude—and make a fresh attempt on the next day, weather permitting. The last man came up the rope, and we made our way up the final slopes of snow on to that great dome of glacier which we had so often gazed on from below.

Ah, what a sight burst upon our astonished eyes as we gained its summit!

It seemed the very acme of mountain glory in all the glories around us. A few hundred feet below lay that terra incognita, the Great Plateau, rounding off southwards to the Hochstetter ice-fall, bounded on the west by the giant form of Aorangi, on the north by Mount Tasman, and on the east by Mount Haast and the ridge of that mountain on which we now stood. The Linda Glacier could just be observed coming round the north-eastern arête of Aorangi, and on either side of it towered up to the heavens the two grandest