DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF NEW ZEALAND. 



H73 



A separate day, or rather several days, must be chosen for a trip to the great 

 Tasman Valley and Glacier, which lie on the other side of Mount Cook from the 

 Hooker and Mueller. It is the most important of all this family of glaciers, its length 

 being about eighteen miles, whilst even at its terminal face its breadth is one mile and 

 three-quarters. Streams issue from both sides of it. The outlet of the Tasman River 

 does not always appear to be in the same place, for sometimes it seems to emerge 

 from the eastern side, and at other times from near the centre of the Glacier, which, by 

 the way, is the lowest in the colony, as its extremity is only two thousand seven 

 hundred and seventy-two feet above the level of the sea. The terminal face is easily 

 accessible even to horsemen when they have reached the river-bed above the delta 



A GLIMPSE ON THE FRANCIS JOSEPH GLACIER. 



swamps, which, for about six miles above its entrance into the Lake, fill its entire valley. 

 But progress is exceedingly slow and laborious from the terminal face onward. It took 

 Von Lendenfejdt, in 1883, six days to get from the terminal face to the foot of the 

 Ball Glacier, eight miles above it. For a distance of three miles upward the Glacier is 

 entirely covered with an enormous deposit of debris, so that the ice is only now and 

 then visible in transverse and longitudinal crevasses, and in large holes from one 

 hundred to one hundred and fifty feet deep. Von Haast says that " it was with great 

 difficulty, when travelling up to it, that I found my way through the old lateral 

 moraines, lying on the eastern side above the drift formation ; the passage being barred 

 by enormous masses of huge blocks, over which it was difficult even to lead a horse. 

 For several miles upwards the Great Tasman Glacier is entirely covered by moraines of 



great depth The main body of the Tasman River finds its exit on the 



eastern side of the Glacier, about two hundred yards above its terminal face, from a 



