Page:Through South Westland.djvu/283

Rh summer the avalanches plunge into an abyss, whose depth one could only guess at, but tons of falling ice were but white powder ere they vanished below. The roar of the avalanches was terrific, mingling as it did with the voice of many waters churning and hurling down from the cliff foot—we counted fifteen waterfalls, but there may have been as many more, pouring from the edge of the ice.

On one side of the main mass, a black precipice jutted out, and over it, in a single stream, shot a glorious waterfall perhaps 800 feet high—the water scattered into smoke and drifted across the face of the rock long before it reached the bottom. From every point it looked absolutely impossible to reach the ice, flanked as it was with precipices. Above the ice rose black and jagged peaks—not my Silver Cone—that were terrible in their grim savagery, and the snow could only lie in patches, so steep were they. From where we stood, the gorge trended away to the right, and a huge abutment of the mountain hid a large part of the main glacier from view. Below us were the treetops, and bush so dense and tangled even to cut one’s way through would be next to impossible work; and hidden beneath the trees the river thundered, tearing its way over masses of rock and stone, unseen from above.

Still we pressed on—if only we could see round that buttress; but every dry water-course was but a furrow in the mountain’s face, and we but