BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 77, 7 May 1914, Page 3

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

BOOKS OF THE DAY. A BLIMBEE IN NEW ZEALAND. Mr Malcolm Rosg, the w;ell-known journalist, has deservedly, won a high reputation as an Alpine climber. He was one of the first of the now quite respectably numerous band of New Zealaudera who have proved to the world that the skill, pluck, and caution which are such important factors in,thc successful climbing of the Alps of the Old World are to be found just as fully, if not so widely, developed in the Britons of the Pacific. But Mr Ross has done more for the cause of mountaineering in this country than the achievement of many notable feats of Alpine climbing. He possesses the pen of a ready ami graceful, albeit a inost laudably jnodest, writer, and he is imbued with sueli a special spirit of enthusiasm for his subject that whatever he has written —and that is not a little —on climbing in the Southern Alps, and in other parts of the Dominion, no small interest for the general reader. For many years- 'Mr Ross has written on the subject of Alpine climbing, and he has now gathered together into one continuous narrative the most important of his scattered articles, subjecting them, however, to a wise revision, adding much new material, and welding them into a comprehensive" and interest-, ii-g record. The result--is a handsome \clume,"A Climber in New Zealand," ■which has -been published by Mr -fidward Arnold, London. To this voluin.e the Rt. Hon. ViseOimt Bryce, the distinguished author and Ambassador, himself a former president of the Alpine Club, contributes a prefatory note, in which he pays eloquent testimony to the super!) scenery of New Zealand's Alpine region, and compliments those of the. youth of these islands "who have been fired by the ambition to emulate those British mountaineers whose achievements they admire/ -as well as by a patriotic love for their own beautiful.and fascinating land.'' Viscount Bryce concludes by expressing the hope that "the fresh and vivid descriptions which Mr Ross gives of the charms, of New Zealand landscape, and of the scope which its, peaks and glacier|;'afford for the energy' and skill of tiiOse wiio Wd Ihaf'lhe European Alps,- have now little that is new to offer, may draw to it more and more visitors .from Britain.

After a preliminary sketch, '' descriptive and historical," of the Southern Alps and the, early explorers,, with special reference to the earlier feats of the two New Zealanders, Fyfe and Graham, who not only acquired the craft of climbing, but route-finding, Mr Koss describes his own earlier experi-j ciices "In the Olden Days" of 1894,! with special reference to his first attempt, in company with his brother, Mr Kenneth Boss, to attain the then un'conquered summit of the giant Aorangi. Very different in those days was the lot of the Alpine climber to what it is to-day. There were then no motors to convey the climbers to the Hermitage, the facilities for the conveyance of. food, tents, and climbing gear to the hutsl were sadly inadequate, and although Green, Fitzgerald, and others had provided certain data; it was relatively nieagre. Four chapters are devoted to the successful ascent of Mount Cook in 1894, by the three young New Zealanders, Fyfe, Clark, and Graham, the first three men to stand' on the summit of this "Cloud Piercer." .That the first'' conquering of Aorangi,'' after many heroic struggles, was "accomplished by the pluck, endurance, and initiative of the young New Zealanders, who, in a far couutrv, had taught themselves the craft of mountaineering," stands out as a grpat and most memorable event in the. history of New Zealand A-lpine climbing. It was at J. 30 p.m. oh Christmas Day, 185)4, that the feat was accomplished, and that the , three men '' exultantly stepped on to the highest pinnacle of the monarch of the Southern Alps." After the fine work of the New Zealanders and the exploits of Mr J5. A. Fitzgerald, an English ('limber, who. with his famous Swiss guide, Zurbriggen, met, on their way to the theatre of operations, the victorious trio returning from their conquest, there was no serious climbing for a few years, until Mr T. C. Fyfe and the author made the first ascent of the Minarets (10,058 feet), ascended Mount Hai<3inger by the eastern face, and were the first to discover the head of the Great. Tasinan' Glacier and the West Coast. These ascents are described by Mr Ross, who, later on, in 1905, was himself successful with his three companions in reaching the summit of Mount Cook and in making the first traverse of this mountain. Mr Ross also gives an interesting account of his passage over the Southern Alps, when, despite difficulties which might well have deterred a man of less pluck and endurance, he reached the West Coast, and then, leaving his companion, Fyfe, in hospital, llokitika, made his way back —alone!—over the dready wastes of rock, snow, and ice to the ever-hospitable Hermitage. Of all these and other exploits Mr Boss, writes crisply, entertainingly, and, £ts I have said, with laudable modestv.

& ITo does not under rate the difficulties and dangers of Alpine climbing; indeed, he is almost prophetic —-in view of the comparatively recent fatality on Mount Cook —as to the certainty of the Southern Alps possessing their own death roll. But lie is enthusiastic in his praise of the fascination of a sport which, after all, if prudence be accompanied by ordinary good luck, is not so much more dangerous than afe many other pastimes in which Englishmen love to indulge. Also, he has a very pleasant literary style, and at times is truly eloquent in his praise of the superb scenery to be viewed from his muph-loved Alpine heights. His wife, who has accompanied him in many of his climbing expeditions, occasionally takes up the narrative, giving interesting, and often very humorous descriptions of camp life. Here and there, Mr Ross, or his wife, provides an '' interlude" in the general record of Alpine climbing, to which the book is mainly

devoted. In Chapter XII, for instance, the author gives his readers a pleas-antly-written description of . what he calls "Kiwi Land," the wild but superbly beautiful; country, round Lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, and the region lving "lakes and the West Coast Sounds. On the expeditions chtonicled;in:' : ,tliis chapter, the author was accompanied, by his: wife, whose interpolated accounts of her curious experiences as cook for the party are written in a vein of humour which is most entertaining.- Mr Ross is enthusiastic as to the peculiar fascination of this. comparatively little known region, arid makes spe.cial reference to its interesting bird life. It is, however, in his description .of that curious bird, the kea, of which the author saw so much in his climbing in the Mount Cook region that Mr Ross is most interesting. In spite of his deplorable taste for the kidney-fat of the sheepj the kea has the author's sympathies, for, '' after all,•'' he says, in the chapter headed "Down in the Valleys," "this was the kea's "country, and man should not have brought his silly sheep into it." The kea reminds the author's wife of "one of those Highland chieftains whose greatest glory was their being 'put to the horn.' " "With what impudence," she writes, "the kea struts, dances, or flutters past your very feet! How he poses himself on a near rock, and lets you come up boldly and miss him, and how condescendingly he waits for another shot, encouraging you with a cheeky 'Kea!' 'Kea!' I have seen a man unversed in the ways of the kea, steal along, holding his missile carefully behind him; but there is no need for Concealment.. You can go boldly up and have, your shot —nothing to pay either, and probably no result, for even if you stun him lie recovers quickly, and is off to his heights unless you are very smart indeed." Paul Pry himself could not excel this cheeky bird in inquisitiveness. He J is everlastingly "wanting to know, you know," and in his researches after knowledge occasionally meets with a disconcerting experience. Mrs Ross says, for instance: — "Once, in the days before the- luxury attendant upon huts and chimneys had crept into the Tasman Valley, I was cooking scones on an improvised oven made out of an old nail-can, when a number of keas fled down from the great shoulder of Mount Cook above the Ball Glacier. They watched fhe culinary operations for a time at a respect-ful-distance, and it was quite evident that some of them had never before seen a fire. One, more daring or more inquisitive than the rest, came closer and closer to it, and I watched him from an adjacent rocky seat cocking his head first on one side and then on the other as he eyed the glowing embers. Finally, he walked right up to the fire, and picked out a live coal with his beak. The result was startling. He dropped it with a loud scream, and, after a few seconds of vituperation, flow away to the moraine. There he whs joined by all the other keas, and, judging from .their chatter, they held a committee meeting, and carried a condemnatory resolution about the cook who exhibited to the eye. of unoffending keas a beautiful red thine that made

BY LIBER

the beak so sore, and that filled the mouth with anger.'' When, however, a weary mountaineer worn out by long hours of patient and toilsome climbing, seeks a well-deserved rest at a mountain hut, and finds that a company of kcas are tossing about empty meat tins and "glissading up and down*the iron roof," ho is apt to vote the bird a confounded nuisance.

The three final chapters are devoted to a description of "The First' Crossing of Mount Cook,'' which was accomplished by the author, in the company of Mr S. Turner, an English climber, and Messrs Fyfe and . Graham, in January, 1905. After a preliminary canter, as it were, and the ascent of Mount Beret 8761 ft, an attempt, unsuccessful, was made to reach the summit of Mount Elie de Beaumont, during which the author was unfortunate enough to bruise one of his ankles very severely. For a day or two it' seemed a,s if Mr Ross would have to i abandon his project of tackling the frowning Aorangi, but fortunately he made''a rapid recovery, and on Tues-, day, January 8, at 11.15 p.m., the quar- 1 tet of plucky climbers left the Bivouac Rock on the Haast Ridge and commenced what was to be a truly mem: orable undertaking. Into the details of the ascent I cannot go: Suffice it to say that at 9 a.m. ,on Wednesday the' little party had gained, an altitude of between-10,000ft and 11,000 ft, and the views were magnificently grand. Says Mr Ross:—

" Tasjnan, the second highest mountain in New Zealand, with his wonderful slopes of snow and ice, and a magnificent snow cornice; was quite close to us 011 the north. Then came Mount Lendenfeld, and the jagged, pinnacled ridge of Haast, which, from this point of view, seemed to bid defiance to the mountaineer. Farther along, on the main divide, rose -the square top ofMount Haidinger, from which the magnificent schrunds and broken ice of the. Haast Glacier fell away towards the Tasman Valley. Beyond that, the rocky peak of De la- Beche, and the beautifully pure snows of the Minarets cleft the blue, leading the eye in turn to the gleaming masses of Elie de Beaumont and the Hochstetter Dome at the head of the Great Tasman Glacier. Across the valley Malte Brun towered gfendly ; 'above all the other rock-'peaks of tile range, and still farther away, towards-the north-east, - was- the finest view of all, range succeeding range, and mountain succeeding mountain for more than a hundred miles, or as far as the eve could reach. In the distance, to the north of the main range, we looked down on a sea of clouds upon which the sun was shining, the higher peaks piercing the billows of mist and looking like pointed islands. We could plainly trace our steps, along the snow aretes that we had climbed, and across the Plateau thousands of feet below. Lower still were the great schrunds and toppling pinnacles of the Hochstetter Ice Fall, and below that the magnificent sweep of the Great Tasman Glacier. Eastward a few fleecy cumulus clouds sailed over the foothills, and beyond were the plains of Canterbury and the'distant sea." An hour's rest and then came the final climb. At the top of the last rock the party found Zurbiggen's matchbox, under a few; pieces of splintered rock, and "left a card in it." Soon the final snow arete that rose steeply aimpst to the summit was reached. "This last bit of the ice cap afforded easy climbing, and at 1 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon we stepped on to the topmost pinnacle of Aorangi—id hours and 45 minutes from the time v/o had left, the Bivouac. . . . I .stepped oulj of tlie rope to secure the first photo j graph that had ever been taken of the} summit of Mount Cook; then we ,con? gratulated each other, and .while Graham got the provisions out of the rucksacks Fyfe employed himself iif taking in the view and coolly cutting up his tobacco for a smoke. After 25 minutes spent on the summit, 12,379 ft above the sea, the descent was commenced. This was accompanied by incidents in which the gravest perils were encountered —indeed one of the most thrilling adventures recorded in the book now took place—but eventually, just after midnight on Thursday, the. party stepped out on to the upper slopes of the Hooker Glacier, and the- first crossing of Mount Cook had been safely accomplished. The concluding sentences of the final chapter bear curiOuS testimony to the extraordinary fascination which Alpine climbing possesses for its votaries. "On the way down the Hooker," says the author, "I had sworn to myself that I would never climb another peak; but so strange an animal is man and so fascinating is his most glorious sport that no sooner had we recovered (at the Hermitage) "from our exertions than we now immediately began to discuss plans for the ascent of Mount Sefton."

Space lias its inexorable limits, ami I must reluctantly bring my notice of Mr Ross 's fasciuatiug volume to a close. Mention must, however, be made of the singularly beautiful illustrations, which are reproductions of photographs taken by the author. Mr Ross is well known as an exceptionally skilled photographer, and he has, in the course of his many years of 'mountaineering, secured

[ a series of pictures of Alpine scenery | which are of more than ordinary interest and beauty. Specially worthy of commendation are the frontispiece, a view of Mount Cook from a turn on the Sealy Range, with the reflections of the snow-capped peak in the waters of the tiny lake; the view of Elie de Beaumont from the Malte Brun bivouac; aful an equally superb view of the higher portion c .of Mount Tasman. The view, facing page ]B2, of a crevasse, from 400 to 500 feet deep, on the Tasman Glacier, is an awe-inspiring picture, which well exhibits tho dangerous nature of so much of the Alpine climber's work. Camp episodes, cookery under peculiar circumstances, and portraits of several well-known New Zealand climbers, are also of interest. The' New Zealand price of the book is 17/6. It ifl to be hoped that later on a cheap-1 er edition may be published, in which; case a rough sketch map, showing,thej principal peaks, with their respective| heights, might with advantage be added. ;

"eei? pearls." " Red Pearls, V by Charlotte Mansfield (Bell :.aiul Sous), -resembles the! curate's egg,' 'iir that it is "good in parts.'' -The scene;''for the nlofit part, is laid in, Dtirb&n, of which, and .of its suburbs, the author gives a most engaging description. The story takes its title from a collection of red pearls found, under romantic circumstances, on a small island in the Indian Ocean, pearls ,which are desired by a beautiful widow, Mrs Clayton, and secured for her, at the peril, of his life, by a handsome English baronet. Considering that the lovely Olive is described "on more than one page as being "icily cold," it comes.as a shock to find (on page 156) that, when Sir Reginald . Lindham "clasped her to his heart, almost brutal in his embrace,'' and "to her surprise, held her but did • not kiss her," "she laid-her mouth on his, drew his underlip between liei**teeth,-and gently gnawed him as an animal caresses her mate, and then he threw.her from.him quickly, violently, as though afraid lest, slower action would min'erve him for the deed." There is here quite a Victoria Cross touch, but 1 can reassure those of my readers who-may imagine "Red Pearl" to be a "naughty story," 'On the contrary, it has a quite Excellent moral. But Miss Mansfield should either eschew the use of French expressions, or get her proofs read by a competent reader. She talks about "petite cheveaux" (on another page "Petit Cheveaux"), and '' Blanquet'' do Veau; and, more than once, discourses upon "I'odour" d'Afrique. Proper names she is continually mis-spelling, such as Max "O'Reil" for O'Reil, and "Rosetti" —this latter a mistake unpardonable in an author who seems to assume quite a proprietary interest in that writer. There is good stuff in the story, but Miss Mansfield is far too careless, especially in her punctuation. On page 274, for instance, commences a sentence, descriptive of the hero's desperate encounter with a rascally creole, which runs into no fewer than forty-one lines, and does not end until the next page is reached.

SHORTER NOTICES. Lad ram Hawke, a-selfish and unscrupulous financier, ruins Max Logan's father, and. Max thereupon swears vengeance v.pon his father's enemy. The story of how this vengeance is accomplished is told by Paul Trent, whose fine novel, "The Foundling," may be remembered* in his latest book, "Max Logan'' (Ward, Lock and Co., per S. and W. Mackay). Logan brings Hawke 1 o the brink ,of ruin, having first made love to, and married, the financier's daughter, whom at first, he uses merely as a pawn in the game of vengeance. Just, however, as the younger man has come to realise that, lie really loves his wife, the latter discovers-her husband's deception, and a new game of vengeance is entered upon, this time with the wife as the chief actor and her husband as the intended victim. How, in the etui, love proves superior to the spirit of revenge I must leave my readers to find out for themselves in the pages of Mr Trent's story, of which the one salient and none too pleasant feature is the complete disregard by each of the three leading characters of the factor of conscience. In the meanness, deliberate lack of everyday honesty, and pettiness of human spite, there is not much to chose between Max Logan and Aileen Hawke, and whilst admitting the ingenuity with which the author works out his plot, the story, to my mind, leaves behind a very disagreeable taste.

In the twenty-iiinc short stories and sketches which are collected under the heading of "Ten-minute Stories" (John Murray, per Whitcombe and Tombs), Mr Algernon Blackwood once again displays his ability for bringing the occult into everyday life. No other writer of to-day, save, perhaps, Oliver Onions, whose " Widdershins" I have specially in mind, can invest the supernatural with such an ail* of convincing realism as ran Mr Blackwood. Telepathy plays an important part in more than one of these delicately-written and fascinating, if at times rather weird, tales, one or two which decidedly suggest memories of the "Fat Boy's" dismal threat of making "your flesh creep." In others, as in that in

which a surveyor's-clerk is driven out of a wood (which is doomed to bo cut down in order that a rich owner may have a better view from his windows), by certain mysterious influences, there is an element of comedy. In all, the graceful literary style comes as a refreshing change from the crude and careless writing to be found in so much of our latter-day fiction. As a study —it is not actually a story—of forests, and the peculiar atmosphere thereof, the sketch entitled Pines" is a little gem. I prefer Mr Blackwood in his longer stories, such as "Jimbo" and "A Prisoner in Fairyland." But any-: thing and everything from his pen is ever welcome.

"A Girl from Mexico," by E. B. Townshend (Metliuen and Co.), is what might be called a "rattling yarn of adventure in the wild and woolly west." A youhg Britisher, of adventurous disposition, becomes.involved in the highly romantic story of a beautiful young Mexican girl. .The swing of the lariat and the crack of the revolver are echoed in every chapter, the author, however, introducing new material, forj a story of this kind,, in his description of a Mexican sect, the. Periitentes,; who; no.t only practise flagellation," but, in their wildest throes of fanaticism, periodically . select one of their number for crucifixion. In the long fun, the hero, who sees his much-cherished Dolores prefer another man, "returned to his blankets a saner being." "If," he .philosophises,; " a man cannot win in love, he may win in war>U»and lie decides to "up stakes" afid be off to South Africa, where " the loud baying bloodhounds of war had been let loose on tiie Natal frontier." He is a likeable young fellow, Mr Townshend's ' ' tenderfoot,'' and the story of his varied experiences and adventures makes good reading.