C. DILLWORTH FOX, ON THE GLACIERS, PAST AND PRESENT. 105 
size to the largest Swiss. According to Yon Lendenfeld, the 
Tasman Glacier has a fall of less than 1,400 metres in 20 miles 
of actual length, and the lower portion from the foot of Mount 
De la Beche 650 metres in 12 miles. Here, too, can be 
observed the effects of prehistoric glaciation, which was on a 
vast scale, and is apparently more modern, or, at any rate, more 
strongly marked and more easily distinguishable than the 
European. 
Now, to our tourist, the road to Mount Cook has many points 
of interest. When he arrives at Lyttelton, the port of Christ- 
church, he finds himself in the crater of a gigantic extinct 
volcano, through the side of which a tunnel has been made — a 
notable undertaking in the early days of the Colony. On 
emerging he sees before him a vast alluvial plain, the great 
Canterbury Plains, celebrated nowadays for mutton and lamb 
(frozen). Arrived at Timaru, a pretty seaport in the downs at 
the southern extremity of the plains, he turns inland, and after 
following a river and its gorge for 30 miles, goes over a low 
saddle into a valley that has been “ closed ” by the elevation of 
the land on the east— a phenomenon quite common on this side 
of the island — and arrives at Fairlie, the terminus of the railway 
westwards. From Fairlie you coach or motor the remaining 
95 miles, first following the river in its windings through the 
folds of the hills, and go over Burke’s Pass into the Mackenzie 
Country, a plain of considerable extent, from 1,000 to 2,000 feet 
above sea level, surrounded entirely by the ranges which form 
the watershed of the great Waitaki Paver, very barren, and 
covered with water-worn shingle. In this plain the three great 
lakes — Tekapo, Pukaki and Ohau — are situated all of which 
present the same features in that they are all of great depth, 
and are blocked by a vast morainic deposit consisting of great 
boulders, from the size of a large hay-stack downwards, 
embedded in a cream-coloured clay which is eagerly licked by 
all kinds of stock, and through which the rivers from the lakes 
have cut their way. You get your first glimpse of the big 
peaks when nearing Lake Tekapo, but from the foot of Lake 
Pukaki, 20 miles further on, there is a marvellous panoramic 
view of the great main range 40 to 60 miles distant. All the 
way thence to the Hermitage — a comfortable hotel nestling 
under the southern lateral moraine of the Mueller Glacier, just 
between Mount Cook and Mount Sefton — the glorious view is 
unfolding and expanding with every turn of the road. You 
follow at first the lake, then close under the Ben Ohau Bange 
and Mount Sealey, crossing en route innumerable shingle fans, 
