Читать книгу With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps онлайн

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To stand before this wonderful piece of Nature’s work and gaze on the weird and fascinating forms of the attendant peaks is an experience not to be forgotten.

The awful and solemn silence of the mountains, broken only now and again by the crash and thunder of an ice avalanche or the screech of a solitary kea, the complete desolation, the loneliness and remoteness from the haunts of men, all tend to inspire one with deep thoughts and feelings. One line in Walter C. Smith’s ‘Hilda’ expresses more than pages of mine would do—

The silence of the mountains spoke unutterable things.

In two hours’ time we were across the glacier and on the point of the ridge descending from Mount Haast, which bounds the northern side of the ice-fall. We began the ascent of the ridge amongst snow-grass and lilies, but soon the vegetation gave way to rockwork, and when a height of about 5,000 feet was attained we made sure that this was our correct route, and, mist coming on, we descended again, and reached our Ball Glacier camp in the evening.