Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/135

Rh their own porterage and guide work from the start. We learned fast from that best of masters—'hard experience.'

Had we been consistently following in the footsteps of trained guides we should not have concerned ourselves about this, that, and the other, but would have left everything to the men of experience, simply being towed about in their wake; whereas we have been obliged to train and exercise all those qualities which a guide possesses, perforce.

Naturally, too, a colonial life is more calculated to teach self-reliance and independence, and from our earliest schoolboy days we have been accustomed to rough work on the hills, pig-hunting, &c., and in camp life on all sorts of hare-brained expeditions. I have, indeed, been in many an awkward place amongst rocks when out on the foot-hills, and must have—perhaps unconsciously—acquired many of those qualities which denote the cragsman.

Want of fixedness of purpose had often lured us away from the peak, and temptations in glacier expeditions had thwarted our determination. I felt confident, however, if Dixon and I got together again we should make a good fight of it with the mountain, for we had learnt to place confidence in each other in many rough trips, and Dixon was a man after my own heart for determination.

On December 1, 1890, then, for the last time Dixon and I found ourselves on the way to the Mount Cook district; we reached Burke's Pass that evening in an express waggon which contained besides ourselves two small Rob Roy canoes, it being our intention to navigate