Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/123

Rh The other men arrived, and simultaneously, as if by some providential magic, the fog began to dissipate.

As it cleared we looked in vain for the familiar points at the head of the Tasman, which Annan and I knew full well. 'Where's Darwin? Where's Elie de Beaumont? Where's the Dome?' No point in sight could be associated with the prominent features of the Tasman. As the low-lying portions of the mist disappeared, we observed that the glacier below flowed to the right! The Tasman should have flowed in the opposite direction.

The truth flashed upon us, and a great cry of surprise went up, 'The Murchison! The Murchison!' The very glacier whose middle parts we had left three hours previously.

Then, leaving Hamilton exhausted on the saddle, the rest of us struck up to some rocks 300 feet higher on the right, and once more a great shout arose as Annan and I saw coming into view the unmistakable double top of the great Hochstetter Dome, whose proud summit we had trodden the previous season.

From these rocks we observed that the course of the glacier commenced under a peak on our left (which must be Mount Darwin itself), and running in a northerly direction for some four or five miles, turning round the end of the spur upon which our saddle was situated, assumed a south-westerly course.

The true saddle between the Murchison and Tasman lay across the glacier below, north-west. Straight ahead of us, north by west, visible over a rocky and unnamed peak on the opposite side of the valley, lay the Dome, then to the north another snow saddle,