1202 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



sunlight. Immense forests of timber clothe their sides down to the very water's edge, and 

 climb away upwards until they reach the region of perpetual snow. Bald Peak and Mount 

 Bonpland, eight thousand one hundred and two feet, look down upon us from their 

 white thrones. Right in front, at the head of the Lake, the Forbes Mountains send 

 down Mount Alfred like a wedge between the Humbolclt and Richardson Ranges ; 

 while far away behind, Cosmos Peak (eight thousand feet), and Mount Earnslaw (nine 

 thousand one hundred and sixty-five feet) and Mount Anstead, lift their white gleaming 

 heads into the azure heavens." 



Our immediate destination is Glenorchy, from which point there is a number of 

 tempting excursions to be made, if one has but time to spare to Paradise Flat, rid 

 the Diamond Lakes; to Mounts Alfred and Judah ; to Mount Earnslaw and Lennox 

 Falls ; to Kinlock and up the Dart River to the Route Burn ; to Lake Harris, Hollyford 

 Valley and Martin's Bay ; and to the Rere Lake. That to Mount Earnslaw and the 

 Lennox Falls should not be missed, whatever may defeat one's intentions regarding the 

 others. There are two routes to the glaciers of Mount Earnslaw. One runs for eight 

 miles up the Rees Valley to the first spur of the Mountain. This was the route 

 followed by Mr. Green, when he unsuccessfully attempted the ascent in 1882. The other 

 involves a ride of twenty-five miles up the same Valley, whence the track for eight 

 miles farther skirts the base of the Richardson Mountains. Upwards of twelve miles 

 more, and "a wide open plateau is reached, bounded on the left and in front by high 

 forest-clad mountains, and crowned on the summit with everlasting snow. The one on 

 the left is Earnslaw ; those away in the front are Mount Anstead and Mount Tyndal." 

 A short ricle beyond this point, and we are on the saddle of the Mountain. Writing 

 of his trip, Mr. Green says that after mounting to a height of two thousand feet, his 

 party " turned round a shoulder to the left and came into view of Earnslaw, its 

 summit - standing out clear against the starlit sky, its snows just faintly illumined by the 

 first rays of dawn. Deep down in the gorge before us its great glacier lost itself to 

 view in the gloom of night, but the sound of the torrent was distinctly audible, its 

 roar now swelling, now dying away with the rise and fall of the gentle breeze. 

 The trough-shaped ravine before us was more Swiss-like than any valley, we had seen 

 in New Zealand ; the icy slopes of Earnslaw towered at its farther end ; its sides were 

 clothed with fine forests of black and white birch, and the glacier torrent in its bottom 

 found an exit towards Diamond Lake through a deep cleft near to which we had com- 

 menced our ascent. . . As yet the sky to the northward and eastward was clear, and 

 the view over the mountain peaks towards Mount Aspiring was very fine. Immediately 

 at our feet the ridge fell away in precipices to the Rees River, which all but mono- 

 polized the narrow bottom of the deep defile over two thousand feet below us ; the 

 only signs of human life being at one spot where some men had conducted a water-course 

 along the opposite hill-side, towards a gold-working in a quartz-reef, which was faintly 

 visible in the depths below." 



It is only two miles from the base of Earnslaw to the Lennox Falls, named after 

 Lord Walter Lennox, in commemoration of his visit to them. There are three falls, 

 and to one of them has been given the quaint title of "The Widow's Tear." for the 

 reason that it vanishes six weeks after the snow begins to melt on the sides of the 



