Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/136

92 the Waitaki River from Aorangi to the sea—should we not previously leave our lifeless bodies at the foot of some precipice or frozen in a crevasse, as many of our friends prophesied.

December 2 saw us crossing the Tasman River in our canoes ten miles below its exit from the glacier, and as it was in flood and running full ten knots, with waves four or five feet high in the rapids, we had an exciting time of it, yet managed to reach the Hermitage side in safety, but not without shipping a good deal of water. This was the first case of a boat of any kind being on these rushing waters, and our good friends in all directions prophesied dire disaster to what they were pleased to term our 'rash venture.' We are getting quite used to these consolations of our friends, who seem quite disappointed that we do not afford them some sensational obituary matter in the daily papers.

Again the faithful Annan was at hand, and greeted us at the Hooker wire rope with the pleasing intelligence that our camp at the Ball Glacier was fixed and our swags conveyed there. The Government surveyor (Mr. Brodrick) and his party were at hand too, and working their way to the Murchison Glacier to make a survey in continuation of their work on the Tasman; we spent the following night in comfort at their lower camp, one mile above the terminal face of the Tasman Glacier, to which point a horse track had already been formed through the scrub.

Again we carried our swags up that cruel piece of walking to the Ball Glacier camp, stopping half-way for lunch at our customary resting-place—'The Cove'—a snug little nook in a rock-face where a rill from