Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/150

102 North-eastwards the glorious array of the Southern Alps extended, presenting a panorama of such magnificence and comprehensiveness that it defies any attempt at description. It is one of those vast pictures which are indelibly impressed upon the memory—one of those overpowering examples of Nature's sublimity which seem to move a man's very soul and call him to a sense of his own littleness.

Close under us lay the scenes of all our joys and sorrows of the past five years: the Tasman Glacier, encircled by those splendid peaks and snow-fields whose forms we had learned to know and love so well; further afield lay the Liebig Range, and, showing over this, Mount Jukes and his attendant satellites of rocky peaks. Beyond this again, far, far away in the blue and indefinite east, we could distinguish the hills of Banks Peninsula, close to our homes near Christchurch, whilst we could imagine that the blue haze distinguishable there was indeed the eastern ocean, 120 miles distant.

It will, of course, be said that we did not make the complete ascent of the mountain. Be that so; neither does Mr. Green claim that honour, though for all practical purposes to be on the ice-cap of Aorangi means the same thing as being on the top. Mr. Green's highest point must, according to his sketches, have been as nearly as possible 100 feet above ours.

But we could not spare time to moralise and rest as we should like to have done, for it was imperative that the terrible ice slopes should be descended before the light failed, and at a few minutes to six we began to go down backwards in our steps, taking a firm hold with our axes at every step.