THE SOUTHERN ALPS. 559 
selves nearer to the Absolute, and felt proud and happy with 
the thought that all the grand glaciers and rocks around were 
conquered by our energy and skill. This is the secret of 
mountaineering, and therin lies the otherwise unattainable hap- 
piness to be felt on the summit of a mountain. We left the 
summit at 6'40p.m., just as the sun dipped his golden disc into the 
purple ocean. Why should the sunlight be so much more 
glorious now than at mid-day ? Of course because he now rises 
on our dear fatherland—no wonder that he shines so much more 
gloriously! It is really owing to the great altitude and the re- 
flection of the light travelling through layers of air of decreasing 
density. We saw the sun set about fifty minutes later than he 
really sinks below the horizon on March the 25th. We hastened 
our steps, for it appeared necessary to get over the lower steep 
wall of ice before the night set in. We hurried down the steps 
in the ice and got to the foot of the steep place just as the last 
glimmering of the parting day was vanishing from the snowy 
crests around us, looming out in the darkness with a phosphor- 
escent greenish light. I recall to the memory of the reader the 
fact that snow retains the light of the sun some time after he has 
departed, and is therefore phosphorescent like sugar. 
Below the lower wall of ice, on the shoulder of our mountain, 
we waited for the rising moon from 8°20 to 8°45 pm. The moon 
was full and illuminated the glacier very well. There was no 
difficulty in finding our steps of the morning again, and we made 
good progress. The flat glacier below the crevasses was reached 
at midnight. Here, of course, there were no traces left. It 
appears that we took a wrong direction, for we were soon en- 
tangled in a mass of crevasses, which got worse and worse the 
further we proceeded. Scrambling along the sharp edges be- 
tween the bottomless black precipices, here and there jumping 
from crest to crest, we hardly advanced at all. The moon shone 
brightly, and made the scenery around look like an enchanted 
palace. Thin and ragged pinnacles of ice projected here and 
there, ready to tumble and crush the wanderer beneath them. 
Anchored firmly with the ice-axe, and holding the others with the 
rope, my mind would wander, and put life into those tottering 
spires. They appeared as an army of giants carrying the debris 
of the rocky mountain slopes on their strong shoulders down 
the valley. Our progress was hardly visible, and we were still 
scrambling along these crevasses when the first dawn of the 
coming day illuminated the eastern slope of Mount Cook. The 
porters, who had been left at the bivouac in the Malte-Brun 
Valley, had come on to the glacier to search for us, and we met 
them just as the firstrays of the sun poured a shower of roses 
over the summit of Mount Cook. The moon was then setting 
behind the crest of that mountain—a pale-green night wanderer 
retiring seedy from a night’s dissipation. At 8 a.m. we reached 
our bivouac, after a forced march of 27 hours, 134 hours of 
which only were spent in stoppages. After three hours’ sleep we 
left our halting place and walked back to our camp. Finding a 
