Geological Survey of Canterbury. 7 



entirely. Prom a vault at least 30 feet high and broad, the stream 

 rushed turbid with suspended matter, leaping over and sometimes con- 

 fined between enormous blocks, often the size of small houses, which the 

 glacier continually throws in its way. I climbed down to the cave 

 the ice of which at the extremity of the glacier was so much 

 decomposed that by a single blow of the hammer huge blocks were 

 shivered to a thousand pieces. But I was not allowed to stand there 

 very long. Seeing that a part of the vault was giving . way, I 

 retreated, and being warned by the call of my companions, I had to 

 stoop behind a huge block, whilst a large fragment of rock 

 several tons in weight fell down, leaping over my place of shelter, 

 and falling into the river with a tremendous crash. 



By joint observations with two aneroid barometers and the boiling 

 water apparatus, I found the altitude of the terminal face of the glacier 

 to be 3837 feet above the sea level. As it was impossible, owing to 

 the falling blocks, to ascend the glacier itself, I followed the lateral 

 moraine, but soon came to the straits through which it squeezes 

 itself. The walls on both sides for about a thousand feet were 

 nearly vertical, and were scratched and polished. As it was 

 not possible to pass these straits, I ascended the hill a few 

 hundred feet, but found that the upper surface of the glacier con- 

 tinued charged with morainic accumulations as far as I could see. 

 Behind the straits the valley enlarged to a basin, bounded in a straight 

 direction by nearly perpendicular walls, at which the almost vertical 

 stratification was visible. This magnificent wall, many thousand feet 

 high, was perfectly bare of vegetation, and only in a few deep holes 

 patches of snow appeared which otherwise would not have found any 

 resting place. It was really a scene of wild grandeur. Main 

 tributaries descended from both sides of the chain skirting this huge 

 wall, and forming in the basin the trunk glacier. This glacier having 

 an east-south-east direction is the most important feeder of the 

 Eorbes stream. Another stream, but of smaller dimensions, joins it 

 in a straight line with its general course, east-north-east, a few yards 

 beyond where the principal stream leaves its icy vault. JSTot being 

 able to find a ford I could only make observations from the point of 

 junction. This second glacier, inferior in size, consisted of white ice, 

 perfectly clear, no moraines of any kind reposing upon it. Only a few 

 solitary blocks appeared scattered upon its pure surface. Vast snow 

 slopes clothed the side of the range, stretching to the bases of the 

 pyramidical peaks, rising above them in savage beauty with only 



