NEW ZEALAND GLACIERS. 453 
we heard a bang as of a cannot shot when some new crevasses 
sprang into existence. 
The blocks of the moraine were all either sandstones or slates 
of the newer palzozoic formation, of which Mount Cook and all 
this range is composed, with occasional fragments of quartz, in 
which we kept a bright look out for gold, and blocks of a kind 
of volcanic breccia, which, according to Professor V. Ball, who 
kindly examined a piece which I brought home, consists of 
fragments of pyroxene and felspar, the latter being much 
decomposed, and some free silica. 
Our first attempt to scale Mount Cook by the southern aréte 
was foiled by meeting a series of crags of the above-named slates, 
which owing to their rotten condition we could not climb. Our 
second attack ended in the face of a great sandstone cliff of the 
eastern spur. Our third and successful attempt was made for 
the greater part by snow and ice, and of the ascent I shall now 
give a few details. Immediately to the north of Mount Cook, 
Mount Tasman raises its glacier-clad peak, and from the basin 
between these two mountains descends, in a grand ice-fall, the 
Hochstetter glacier. This glacier forms one of the most splendid 
sights in the Southein Alps. Its chaos of sevacs tinted with 
every icy hue, from beryl blue to silvery white, is of course quite 
inaccessible, as every moment the ice blocks topple over with 
loud boomings and crashes, and descend from level to level in 
clouds of ice dust. No speck of moraine pollutes its surface 
though a medial moraine appeared lower down. showing that the 
ice-fall is really a junction of two glaciers. To reach the basin 
or plateau above the Hochstetter ice-fall was now our object, so 
on the Ist of March we started at day-break. with rugs fora 
bivouac and provisions for three days, and after crossing the 
Mount Cook glacier, and the Hochstetter glacier below its ice-fall 
we climbed the steep rocks of the spur from Mount Tasman. and 
after ten hours’ work settled ourselves for the night on some 
stones beneath a large boulder about 3000 feet above the Tasman 
elacier. 
Starting from our bivouac at six a.m., we reached the plateau 
above the Hochstetter glacier, and then by a glacier coming down 
between thesouthern aréteand thearéteconnecting Mount Cookwith 
Mount Tasman, which I have called the Linda glacier, we gained 
the last steep ice slopes of the peak, and after about five hours’ 
step-cutting stood on the highest ridge at 6.20 p.m. The wind 
was N.W., the ice thawing rapidly ; temperature about 40°. As 
my thermometer was broken I could not take the exact tempera- 
ture ; it may therefore have been even higher than 40°; it could 
not have been much lower. My aneroid read 19°35 inches, which, 
with correction to bring it into comparison with the standard 
instrument in the post offiice at Timaru, would be 19'05, and by 
comparison with the sea-level readings, furnished to me for that 
day by Dr. Hector, Superintendent of the Meteorological depart- 
ment, New Zealand, our elevation above the sea-level would ap- 
