Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/41

Rh torrent, often bearing down with it blocks of ice from the Mueller and Hooker Glaciers above.

Turning in a north-easterly direction round the end of the range we shaped our course up the Tasman Valley, and in two hours' time from the Hermitage arrived at the terminal face of the great glacier, which fills the whole of the valley from side to side, a width of about two miles. Here, then, the hard work was about to begin, for the horses could not proceed further, and it was necessary to carry everything from this point on our own backs.

Ah! good reader, have you ever carried a swag, a real swag—not a Swiss knapsack—but a real, torturing, colonial swag? When you take it up and sling it on your back in the orthodox fashion you remark: 'Yes; I think it does weigh fifty pounds.' In ten minutes your estimate of its weight has doubled. In an hour you begin to wonder why Nature has been so foolish as to make men who will carry swags; bad language seems to slip out 'quite in a casual way,' and you begin to bend forward and do the 'lift.' But the 'lift' does not seem to fulfil quite all that is said in its praise, for soon the torturing burden settles down again and drags on to your shoulders more heavily than ever. After a bit of nice balancing over loose moraine the swag triumphs. Down you go, and the wretched thing worries you, whilst you bark your fingers and swear horribly, bruising your knees and shins, and cursing the day on which you saw the light of a hard and feelingless world. You recover and repeat the performance as before, and by the time your day's work is done you find out to your own demonstrated