Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/341

Rh eleven thousand feet high. Besides Mount Cook there are Tasman, 11,467 feet; Dampier, 11,291; Silberhorn, 10,796; Roberts, 10,487; Malte Brun, 10,421; Elie de Beaumont, 10,200; Douglas Peak, 10,107; Haidinger, 10.059; and De la Beche, 10,040. From the hotel to the Tasman Glacier there are two commonly traversed routes. One crosses the Hooker River by a swing bridge and runs along the steep face of the Mount Cook Range to the Tasman Valley; the other route follows the opposite bank of the river to "the cage," a box running on an aerial tramway, in which Alpinists are ferried across the Hooker. The terminal moraine of the Tasman Glacier would be an excellent place to operate a stone crusher. As I saw it, en route to Ball Hut, it appeared to be one vast rock heap for several miles. Great quantities of this débris had been so finely broken as to be suitable for road-making without further treatment. On this sterile heap, rising far above my head, nothing grew, but in the scrubby growths beside the path were many flowers, the veronica, buttercups, daisies, violets, pimpernels, and the yellow spines of the Wild Spaniard; here also were the totara scrub and its edible red berry.

Trees were scarce, but there was one I shall not forget. This was what might properly be termed the Halfway Tree, for it shaded the Halfway Place between the Hermitage and Ball Hut. The Halfway Place wasn't a hotel, nor even a house. It consisted of a small tree, a table, a galvanized-iron-bound chest containing tea,