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284 Club, and had brought the two Swiss mountain-climbers to assist him in making the ascent. They made several attempts before they succeeded, and when they finally reached the summit it was after several narrow escapes from death. They passed one night standing on a narrow ledge of rock, where a single misstep would have hurled them to instant death thousands of feet below. Frequently they toiled for hours up the side of a spur of the mountain, and then found that their labor was lost, as farther ascent was impossible, owing to the steepness of the rock."

"They had all the variety of adventures recorded in the history of Alpine climbing," said a gentleman who was in conversation with Doctor Bronson at the time the query was propounded, "except that of being swept into crevasses or down the slope of the mountain and losing their lives. Mr. Green has published a book, entitled 'The High Alps of New Zealand,' in which you will find a description of the ascent of Mount Cook. After you have read it I don't think you'll want to follow the example of that gentleman, unless you have more than the ordinary enthusiasm about mountain-climbing."

"As we looked at the peak of Mount Cook rising sharply into the sky," Frank continued, "we concluded that a view of the mountain from below would satisfy all our desires. The gentleman roused our curiosity, however, when he told us about the wonderful glaciers that lie on the lower slopes of the great mountain, some of them larger than any of the glaciers of Switzerland. Then on the way he pointed out several lakes that are fed by the glaciers on Mount Cook and other peaks of the Southern Alps just as the lakes of Switzerland and Italy are fed by the glaciers from the Alps of Europe. Some of these lakes are forty or fifty miles long, and of almost unknown depth; indeed, some of them are deeper than the level of the ocean, though their bottoms have been filling up for ages with the débris brought down by the glaciers.

"Look on the map and find Lake Tekapo; it is fifteen miles long and three wide, and is supplied by the great Godley glacier, which lies just above it. The Tasman glacier, eighteen miles long, is the largest in New Zealand, though this statement is disputed by some authorities. At any rate, there are a great many glaciers, and all have not been fully explored. They are on the western as well as on the eastern slope of the mountains; one of them descends from Mount Cook to within seven hundred feet of the sea-level, and for a long distance is bordered by magnificent vegetation in which tree-ferns and fuchsias are conspicuous. In this respect the glacier resembles that of Grisons, in Switzerland,