Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/43

Rh like carving-knives and points like needles, having stalks sometimes eight or ten feet high; stunted totara, many varieties of veronica, celmisias with large marguerite daisy-like flowers, the beautiful white ranunculus, and a hundred bushes and creepers all mixed up in the most glorious confusion amid rocks sometimes covered with slippery moss, over and amongst which it is anything but pleasant to force one's way. The mountain sides are clothed almost up to the snow-line with beech, totara, ribbon-wood, veronica, and other trees, the rich foliage being beautifully varied; but not having sufficient time to cut bedding, we spent an uncomfortable night. The first evening is always the worst in camp. In the morning we continued our rough journey up the valley and our struggle with the 'worrying' swag.

Soon we discovered traces of fires and old camps, and we knew we were on the tracks of Green's and Von Lendenfeld's parties. An hour for dinner under a splendid waterfall, and more toiling onwards, till at last we were over the last boulder-face from the mountain on our left, with the Ball Glacier in full view. Fox, bending down, picked up a portion of an old veil, shortly after I found a goggle box, then came a tomahawk lying on a rock, then the historical tent poles of Mr. Green, and we knew we had reached 'Green's fifth camp.'

Off came the swags, and right glad we were to be done with them. If a man were only built on the same lines as a Mount Cook grasshopper he might 'stand some show' in those parts, for these insects are the most accomplished rock acrobats, jumping twenty or thirty