Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/34

12 Zealand—opposite to Mount de la Bêche, then the Darwin Glacier followed by the mountain of the same name, and then the saddle between Mount Darwin and the Hochstetter Dome.

Now, again, on the left or western side of the great glacier we have the Mount Cook Range for ten miles, the Ball Glacier, Aorangi, the Hochstetter Glacier, Mounts Tasman, Haast, Haidinger, Glacier Peak, Mounts Spencer, Kant, Rudolf (at the head of the Rudolf Glacier), De la Bêche, Green, and Elie de Beaumont, the last followed by the Lendenfeld Saddle, to which I have already referred.

From Mount Tasman northwards to this saddle all these mountains are situated in the main chain. Aorangi itself, though popularly believed to belong to the main divide, is in reality separated from it by a rocky ridge and a saddle of about 10,500 feet, which leads to the Hooker Glacier on the one hand and the Linda on the other, both being east of the main divide. Aorangi itself, therefore, consists of a divergent ridge, the whole of whose drainage goes eastward.

Though for some years I have believed this to be the case, it is only quite recently that I have been able to substantiate the belief by ocular demonstration, when the ascent of the mountain was accomplished by Mr. Dixon and myself. To this expedition I shall refer later on.

The reader must picture to himself the great Tasman Glacier, nearly two miles in width and eighteen to twenty in length, occupying the whole of the bed of the valley, and fed on both sides by numerous tributary ice-streams from the mountains.