Page:Through South Westland.djvu/119

Rh walls of a vast cathedral of crystal—and every step had to be cut. The colouring was marvellous: turquoise and green—and that blue of glacier-pools which is neither—mingled with opal and pink. Since then I have been on several other New Zealand glaciers, but never one of them all like this. In two hours we had not progressed a quarter of a mile, but we were high enough to see its winding course, and the glittering snowfields at its head. Then we turned to look back. An enormous roche moutonnée seemed to block its course to one side, and we looked away beyond this to the waving forest with its crimson ratas, and Okarito lying in a blue haze. But it was cold work standing with one’s feet in a little ice niche, and we could only move one at a time. We had seen enough for a first acquaintance with the glacier, and so we came down and rode back to the inn. Next day we were to start early and see the Fox, a glacier seventeen miles south of this—even larger, I believe, than the Franz Josef.