Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/339

Rh and it is hundreds of feet deep. Like other mountain torrents it has its rapids, or what correspond to them, but they are rapids that move slowly. And with all the terrific pressure they and the mass behind them exert, the glacier's daily flow is only eighteen inches, an inch for every mile of its length. In the Hooker River Valley, in a cozy retreat beside the terminal moraine of the Mueller Glacier and below the prodigious cliffs of Mount Sefton (10,350 feet), lord of the Moorhouse Range, I was lodged at the Alpine climber's haven. In this well-chosen spot, twenty-five hundred feet above the sea, with a Government as host and Alpine guide, I was made to feel at home, and was provided with all the requisites of mountain climbing. Here, too, I obtained an inspiring view of Aorangi, and along the whole face of Sefton saw ice filling canyons and crowding against cliffs which it slowly was chiseling away. Nearer still, within a few hundred feet of the hotel, were ice blocks, ice walls, and ice caves. The Hermitage—since considerably enlarged—was a group of one-story, galvanized-iron-clad buildings on a grassy slope near the Hooker River and within sight of the Tasman River. The first exterior view of the Hermitage proved it to be the headquarters of mountain climbers. On clotheslines back of the hotel hung leg cloths, stockings, and garments; and against the "boot shop" and elsewhere alpenstocks and ice-axes leaned. The boot shop was an indispensable adjunct to the Hermitage. In it was a big stock of armor-plated boots,