497 
breadth, has an elevation of 1717 feet above the sea, 1 its water 
likewise being milky - turbid. It is shut in by an old terminal 
moraine attaining a height of 186 feet above the lake. The view 
from the outlet of the lake towards the Southern Alps with Mount 
Cook in the centre and a wooded islet in the foreground is described 
as sublime in the extreme, and when we imagine villas and parks 
around its shores, the Lago di Como or Lago Maggiore would not 
bear comparison with it. The main- tributary from the North is 
the Tasman river, a sluggish stream, separated into numerous 
branches — Dr. Haast in one place counted 34 of them — and flow- 
ing through a broad valley, which is noted for swamps and danger- 
ous tracts of quick -sand. This valley leads to one of the most 
extensive glacier-regions of the Alps. 
Five large glaciers extend from the slopes of Mount Cook and 
of the adjoining peaks, — which Dr. Haast has designated by the 
names of Mount Hai dinger, Mount de la Beche, Mount Elie de 
Beaumont and Mount Darwin, — in a southerly and southeasterly 
direction far down into the valleys. The Great Tasman glacier, 
the main source of the river Tasman , of a length of 1 8 miles , and 
a breadth of nearly two miles at its terminal face is the largest 
glacier hitherto observed in New Zealand. 2 For a distance of three 
miles upward this glacier is entirely covered with an enormous load 
of debris, so that the ice is only now and then visible in trans- 
verse and longitudinal crevasses and in large holes 100 to 150 feet 
deep. About nine miles up the valley it receives from a western 
side -valley a glacier one mile broad, which descends in two arms 
from the slopes of Mount Cook, Mount Tasman and Mount Hai- 
dinger, and which my friend Haast was pleased to designate after 
my name — Hochstetter glacier. The streams from the Tasman 
glacier flow on both sides of the glacier. The Murchison glacier, 
1 According to Mr. Thomson i.377 feet. 
2 The Tasman glacier was, till within the last years considered the largest 
glacier in any temperate region, surpassing in magnitude by far those of the Hima- 
layas and European Alps. Since then Captain Godwin Austin, of the Indian Survey, 
has explored some glaciers in Thibet of a length of thirty-six miles, and conclusively 
shown that they extended formerly as far as one hundred miles down the valley. 
Hochstetter, New Zealand, 32 
\ 
