Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/330

214 In the New Zealand Alps there are hard and dangerous ascents, but to the tourist none is known which in difficulty and peril worthily compares with the Aiguille Grépon, Aiguille Dru, Torres Inglese, or Kleine Zinne. To the average Northern Hemisphere tourist, however, the Southern Alps are unknown, and few professional mountain climbers have made their acquaintance. Some day, when Southern Alpine visitors number thousands instead of hundreds, the great variety of this long white world will be far better known; and precipitous cliff faces, "chimneys," and slabbed height, now ignored or undiscovered, will be sought and conquered by alpenstock and armored foot.

In their accessibility the Southern Alps excel the Swiss Alps. Their glaciers, which are larger than those of Switzerland, are reached with astonishing ease. Furthermore, the snow-line in the New Zealand Alps is much lower than that of Switzerland's Alps. On the west it is so low that, between latitudes forty-three and forty-four degrees, the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers descend to within slightly less than seven hundred feet of sea-level and into dense forests.

A varied world, in truth, are the Southern Alps and their radiating ranges. On one side are the festooned forests of the Tasman seaboard; on the other side are sparsely inhabited tussock plains. Here stormy elements and great rivers of ice are slowly wearing down mountains; here torrential snow rivers aid and continue the work of destruction by carrying away the eroded