Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/119

Rh within, a few feet of us, jabbering and swearing in their own peculiar language at such a party of intruders on their domain.

The night was spent in comparative comfort, for we were beginning to feel the effects of our desperate swagging, and could go to sleep almost anywhere. It is simply astonishing what a man can put up with, when he has to; I have slept soundly in all sorts of queer positions, even upon a mixture of ice and sharp stones, without a tent and with only one thickness of blanket, when the thermometer has been several degrees below freezing point.

We were early aroused in the morning by the persistent attentions of the keas; they even went the length of pecking at our sleeping-bags, so tame and unaccustomed to man are they in these parts. We all wanted more rest, but it was not to be thought of if we adhered to our original plan of crossing a supposed saddle at the head of the Murchison to the Tasman Glacier by Mount Darwin, and returning to our head-quarters after accomplishing the circuit of the Malte Brun Range.

We were soon off, and toiled up the small valley formed by the lateral moraine of the glacier and the slopes of the Malte Brun Range. About a mile or so up we observed another glacier lying in a comparatively low saddle above us on our left, beyond this a rocky spur, and then another and larger branch glacier which for a time we took to be the main body of the Murchison, as indicated by the maps. We made for it and climbed its enormous face of ice, and then we discovered our error, for there, a mile away across