i, 74 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



number of caves and fissures joining the large outlet from the Murchison Glacier, which 

 had already washed its eastern side for more than two miles. The River meanders 

 through its valley, here two and a half miles broad, in at least twenty channels ; it has 

 a great body of water, but in fine weather is easily fordable on horseback by anyone 

 having knowledge sufficient to select the fords. To its junction with the Hochstetter 

 Glacier, descending in a deep valley between Mount Cook and Mount Haidinger, this 

 Glacier (the Great Tasman) has only lateral moraines, but after the junction a large; 

 medial moraine is formed which very soon covers the whole Glacier ; only here and 

 there large hollows filled by pools of water of a deep blue colour and often of large 

 extent, being two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet deep, betray in their perpen- 

 dicular walls the existence of ice." The slowness of the glacier motion is evidenced 

 by the fact that the sun is able to melt its flanks and to maintain a clear space from 

 ten to thirty chains broad on either side of the valley, while dense vegetation covers 

 its southern part. 



The great ice-fall of the Hochstetter Glacier pours down from the hollow or basin 

 between Mount Tasman and Mount Cook, and presents a spectacle of surpassing 

 grandeur, forming in its descent " a splendid cascade of ice four thousand feet high." 

 At its juncture with the Tasman Glacier there is a hole about five hundred feet deep. 

 The Hochstetter Dome stands at the northern end of the Hochstetter Glacier, and 

 dominates all the peaks of the Malte Brun Range. It is especially remarkable for the 

 length, breadth and depth of the crevasses on its southern slope. Von Lendenfeldt, who 

 made the ascent, along with his wife and three porters, from the eastern side, on the 

 25th of March, 1883, says: "After travelling for some distance we reached the foot of 

 the steep ice-slope which descends from the ridge of Mount de la B&che at 9.30, and 

 remained there half-an-hour before continuing our ascent. The farther we proceeded up 

 the Glacier the more the crevasses vanished, and the latter part was a flat glacier for miles 

 as smooth as an asphalt pavement, with an incline of only three degrees, although the 

 line of perpetual snow lies much higher than this place, which is only about five thou- 

 sand feet above the level of the sea. The eastern wall of Mount de la Beche is one 

 of the most remarkable sights around the Tasman Glacier, It is covered with a coating 

 of ice several hundred feet thick, splintered up into large blocks of a quadrilateral shape. 

 These blocks are formed by immense quantities of frozen snow, which has not yet been 

 transformed into crystallized ice. The ice is not blue, as it is in the ice-fall of the 

 Hochstetter Glacier, but quite white throughout. This furrowed coating of snow reaches 

 up to the range of .Mount de la Beche, which is the highest point of the mass of 

 elevation that divides the Tasman Glacier from the Rudolph Glacier. 1 have calculated 

 the height of Mount de la Bexhe at ten thousand one hundred and seventy-nine feet, 

 so that it is the third mountain in. height in the Southern Alps; the highest mountain 

 being Mount Cook, the height of which is twelve thousand three hundred and forty- 

 nine feet, and the next Mount Tasman, ten thousand six hundred and forty-eight feet. 

 All the other mountains which form the enclosure of the basin of the Tasman Glacier 

 are about ten thousand feet high. Making our way up the undulating ice-slopes winding 

 about between the crevasses, we at length got over most of them, and reached the 

 saddle between the Hochstetter Dome and Mount Elie de Beaumont at 12.30 p.m. 



