Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/63

Rh point. I refer, of course, to the upper part of the route above the Haast Ridge. Even the plateau is so shut in as to be invisible from any distant point, except from the peaks of the Malte Brun Range on the opposite side of the valley.

Scraping away all the larger stones from under an overhanging rock and building a semicircular break-wind, we dug holes for our hips (one gets very sore in hard beds of this nature if such a precaution be neglected), wriggled into our blanket-bags, boiled a pannikin of Liebig, and slept like tops till the morning.

The rosy fingers of the morn had just opened the gates of day as our heads emerged from the apertures of our bags, and showed one of the most magnificent panoramas of Alpine wonder which it has been my lot to view.

Three thousand feet below us lay the Tasman Glacier with its marvellous stream of pure ice, on our right the Hochstetter ice-fall, on which we could look down and view with wonder its chaos of séracs and crevasses, the ice-clad precipices of Aorangi rising heavenwards from it in bold ruggedness. Down the valley to the south-west the grey moraine, with the meandering river still further afield. Across the valley the rocky peaks of the Liebig and Malte Brun Ranges with their hanging glaciers, and right opposite to us Malte Brun himself, a pyramid of red rock, flanked by ice and snow slopes, standing out clearly against the morning sky like a great grim castle, and looking quite safe from any assault of man—on this side at all events. Following round the panorama to the northwards. Mount Darwin