Maxnkkixg. — Oil the MiircJiison Glacier. 36c^ 



ship, and was in anything but a fit condition for such exertion 

 as we had undergone. 



We had but three hours of dajdight left, but made good 

 time down, keeping to our upward tracks, and, with the excep- 

 tion of a kicky escape from a small avalanche which crossed 

 our path behind us, and an occasional half-tumble into a 

 thinly-covered crevasse, reached a point beyond the junction 

 of the Cascade Glacier an hour after dark, where w^e 

 bivouacked for the night, and next morning dragged our weary 

 limbs out of our sleeping-bags at 4.30 a.m., and reached the 

 Ball Glacier camp on the Tasnian by noon. 



Owing to shortness of provisions and the distressed con- 

 dition of our party, it was imperative that we should re- 

 turn to camp as soon as possible, so that our topographical 

 observations from our highest point were necessarily hurried, 

 and I submit my suggestions with some diffidence, though we 

 ourselves feel satisfied that they will be verified by future 

 surveys. 



Points of Scientific Interest. 



The points of scientific interest which arise in an excursion 

 of this nature are manifold, and the Murchison Glacier, with 

 its immediate surroundings, offers a splendid field to the student 

 or lover of nature. 



To the geologist it exhibits sections laid bare for thousands 

 of feet, and illustrations of the action of water, in its various 

 forms of snow, frost, rain, ice, or stream, are plentiful on every 

 hand. One can trace the history of a stone from the point 

 of its denudation as an angular and many-sided block, through 

 all its rough usage, grinding, and attrition during its years and 

 year'^ cf travel down the glacier, and imagine it being gradually 

 rolled over and over amongst its fellows, until, many decades 

 after, it is brought up, rounded and smooth as a marble, by the 

 Tasman Glacier, which bars its further course. 



The many boulder-fans and tali of debris one meets with 

 in the lower part of the valley naturally lead one to think of 

 the history of their formation, which is, I believe, mostly ac- 

 complished by the agency of snow, and not so much by that 

 of water as is popularly supposed. In the winter-time all the 

 gullies that supply these fans are filled with snow (which is 

 subject to a certain extent, and under certain conditions, to 

 the same laws which govern the motion of a glacier), and, as 

 denudation of the rocks proceeds, the detached fragments are 

 precipitated on to the surface of the snow, and glide — where 

 the angle of the descent is steep enough — and are carried down 

 by snow-slips and avalanches in the spring-time, and deposited 

 as the snow melts in the summer. 



Fans composed of small shingle one can see being built up 



