THE ASCENT OF MT. COOK.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9013, 28 January 1895, Page 3

THE ASCENT OF MT. COOK.

! TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS. | Sir, — If your correspondents signing themselves " Mountaineer" had had the I grace to sign their names, they might prove to be Timaru men, and possibly men ; whom, amongst others, I endeavoured to [ include in a New Zealand party, with the object of climbing to the actual summit of IMu Cook, before the Englishman came* And it is most unworthy of a man—who, S pretending to be a " mountaineer," to make | a number of cowardly personal remarks, and then not to have confidence enough in his opinion to sign them. Po3aibly if he had I signed them he would have got " salted "•— but he prefers to pub on a mask and stab in the dark. Mount Cook was to all intents climbed by Mr Green and afterwards by Mannering and myself, aud so accurately did Mr •■' Green describe the route, and bo well do we know inch of it, that it is like going up a high road, and is purely a matter of. good luck aa to weather, &&, and Mr Fyfe knows this quite well. \ I Perhaps " Mountaineer " in his ignorance ; does not know that the"so-called years Mannering and I have spent '-climbing Mount Cook," do not amount, when every day is counted, to the time spent on Mount Cook by Messrs Fyfe and Graham this summer, and a ten-days' Bank holiday does j not allow of spending half the summer on Mount Cook. Steps cut in hard ice remain j a long time in spite of everything, but I'm 1 not prepared to prove that any'trace of our i steps yet remain on Green's' route. As tq, | the " deprecatory remarks of Mr 'M. J. i Dixon regarding the ascent of Mount Cook." j** Great is Diana,"and so I might continue to cry, but I am not going into rhapsodies lof fulsome adulation of Mr Fyfe, and I do I not think he expects it,' and if Mr Mountaineer could only see a little more clearly | through those remarks he would see thab | they attribute great credit to the indepen--1 dence of judgment and character of Meusrs Fyfe and Graham. . Messrs Harper and Adamaon concluded years ago that Mount Cook could be climbed from the Hooker, although they did hot actually "point out" the route aa I inadvertently' put it in the Press, January 4th ; and, as to Jaok Clark, I only took Fyfe's word for it, **that he was a beginner and anxious to learn ; ,r and' as to making Fyfe promise "after" he and" I and Mannering' had tried Mouni Cook in 1893, " that he would not set foot on Mount Cook for two years.** "Mountaineer" ia wrong, as Green's .route was specified, and the Hooker aide was .opento Mr Fyfe all last summer, when most of his time was spent on tbe glacier, and the compact- was made, "before" our 1893 climb, not after. In this whole affair j I strove for one point, and that was that a NewZealander should first "top" Mount Cook, and I did succeed, though personally had little to do with it. Perhaps '-Mountaineer" will in future try to get at the merits of the case.before, making a cowardly attack on a comrade by , means of an inappropriate, assumed name.; ■—Yours, &c.j " M. J. Dixosr. - [We do not countenance attempts to fix the authorship of-anonymous, letters,, and have, therefore, struck out a name hazarded by Mr Dixon.—Ed. Panss.]