BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2474, 29 May 1915, Page 14

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

the conquest of mount cook,

An important addition to the already substantial bulk of literature dealing with alpine climbing and mountaineering generally in New Zealand has been made by the publication of Miss Freda Du Faur's book, "Tho Conquest of Mount Cook and' Other Climbs: An Account of Four Seasons' Mountaineering in New Zealand" (London: George Allen and Unwiiv per Whiteombe and Tombs). Miss Du Faur is a Sydney young lady who first visited tho Mount Cook region in December, 1906, lier first climb—if climb it can be seriously called—being with a party which went up the Soaly Range. Two years later she again visited New Zealand and id some minor climbs, reaching on ono occasion a pass immediately beneath the third summit of Mount Cook. "Then and there," she tells us, "I decided I would be a real mountaineer, and some day bo the first woman to climb Mount Cook." At the close of 1909 she was back again at the Hermitage, and soon set to work in real earnest in preparing herself for her great enterprise, successfully climbing Mount Sealy and Malte Brun. and finally attempting the ascent of Mount Cook. Owing to various oircum6tances, the chief obstacle being the weather, the enterprise failed, and after a trip to Westland via the Copland Pass, the Waiho Gorge and the Franz Josef Glacier, the plucky young Australian, by this time a fairly, expert mountaineer, returned home.

For her second attempt to conquer the great monarch of the Southern Alps Miss Du Faur made special and careful physical preparation, going through a three_ months' course of training at the Dupain Institute of Physical Education in Sydney. In November, 1910, she ouco again took up her quarters at the Hermitage, and jmder the skilful piloting of her faithful friend, Peter Graham. the well-known guide, she made a few climbs of. relatively minor importance, but all-sufficiently "stiff" as to give her that caution, confidence, and courage which are the essentials to' alpine success. Finally, on the evening of November 30, Miss Du Faur set off, with a gentleman friend, and aocompanied by the faithful Graham brothers on the first stage of the adventure, the journey to the Hooker hut. The next day, after a sleepless night, for the hut was'groaning and rocking under the. heavy . westerly gale, tho party set out at five o'clock on what turned out to be a glorious summer's morning. Of tho scene from the Bivouac. which the adventurers reached just as_ tho sun was setting, Miss Du Faur gives a pretty little word-pioturo: The fog was rapidly .clearing, and as tho setting sun's rays pierced through the thin mist there began a series of the most wonderful colour effects it is possible to imagine. . . Away on the horizon, outlined against a pale green evening sky, roso peak after peak vivid with an edge of purest gold; the nearer cones were touched with violet and rose, while over Baker's Saddle drifted soft little clouds of crimson and gold, which shattered themselves into rainbow mists and vanished as they touched the rugged, sun-warmed rocks that impeded their westward flight. Tho changes of colour wore so quick that it was impossible to follow them—they were here and there and gone in a breath'. No voice was raited' above a whisper: we seemed' to be watching some scene in fairyland that at a sound would vanish and leave us dazed and desolated. Slowly the colours faded, and the mountains were blotted out by the shadowy twilight and innumerable stars glinted from the deep blue sky. The pageant was over, the day was done, and we who had witnessed it orept quietly to sleep, awed by a beauty Eu<ih as one tees but once in a lifetime. I have quoted the above passage as fairly illustrative .of the literary skill whioh the author has brought to tho writing of her book. There are few chapters that do not contain similar proofs of the grace and charm of Miss Du Faur's style. Of the author's account of the actual ascent, her arrival at the summit, and of the perilous return journey along account was given in The Dominion of May 8.

The conquest of Mount Cook was followed by a long t>eries of other successful climbs, all of which are described in the Bamo modest but eminently interesting style which characterises the_ story of Miss Du Faur's greatest triumph. The work is one which deserves a much longer review than is possible this week. A prefatory chapter contains a brief hut most interesting rosumo of mountaineering in the Mount Cook district hetweeen 1562 and 1909, the author closing with a regret thalfc comparatively so few "young colonials" go in for alpine climbing, for which the Dominion affords such splendid opportunities. A valuable feature of the book is its wealth of illustration The pictures are reproduced—not alway6 quite so well as they might or ought to have been— from photographs taken by Miss Du Faur. Thay are \ery numerous, and many of them represent scones hitherto not illustrated in books of this kind. Miss Du Faur's work has been very handsomely produced by her publishers, a special word of praiso being due to the fine clear type used, and the quietly artistic neatness of the binding. If the volume has a fault, it is that it is rather too large to be placed alongside its predecessors on the sama shell. (New Zealand price, 205.) A CONQUISTADOR. No English author is better qualified to write a life of one of the most famous of the Conquistadors than is Mr R. B. Ciraninghame Graham, who knows his Spain and tho Spaniardsold and new—as do few Englishmen and who, for a professed Socialist, has a curious but keen sympathy with tho highly individualistic ambitions and methods of tho gallant band of adventurers who followed Cortes to Mexico. Mr. Graham has now produced a work entitled "Bernard Diaz del Castillo, being some account of his taken from his True History of the Conquest of New Spain" (London, Evoleigh Nash), which deserves'a'place in every library) public or private, which contains a copy of Prescott's well-known works on the Spanish conquorors of Mexico and Peru. A Castilian by birth, Bernard Diaz first saw light of day in 1192, the very year of the discovery of America. At twenty-two ho found himself at Nombre de Dios later such a favourito resort of the buccaneers, and tlienco made his way to Havana, as a soldier of fortune, equipping, with a few other "gentlemen adventurers," a small expedition which lauded on the Mexican coast, and after various exciting experiences got back to Cuba with some twenty thousand dollars worth of gold. Later on he joined the famous expedition commanded by Cortes and so came to participate in most, if not. all. the sensational adventures which befell tho Spaniards who pushed into the eitv of Mexico, compassed, the destruction of the Aztec empire, mi l established Spanish rule in New Spain. Diaz himself lived to a rips old ngo, to become Regidcr of the town of Guatemala, and

what is much more important, to write his wonderful history of tie conquest, that history into which Prescott and others have all dipped with so much advantage, but which Mr. Graham now presents to English readers for the first time in a. condensed form, picking out the many plums of pic.turesque description and brilliant character drawing, and accompanying tho extracts by a running commentary written in that nervous, spirited English of which 'he has so often proved himself a master. Of Diaz himself Mr. Graham writes:— He loved Cortes as perhaps few soldiers in the world have loved their generals, but to hear all tho Conquest put down to Cortes's right arm, while lie himself and all his comrades were quite forgotten and not named, stirred up the feelings of equality and pride, dear to all Spanish hearts. It was the braver of him, for he was poor, unlearned, and of all those who sailed from Cuba with Cortes, only five old men were left alive, crippled by debts and wounds. Odds never daunted him his whole life long, either by land or sea, or if he fought with Christians or Infidels, and though his last adventure was to the full as desperate, all things considered, as any he had yet encountered, he boldly plunged into it, and wrote a book unequalled in its kind in the whole world. Good faith and a dry Spanish humour illumine every page." The lack of an index is greatly to be deplored. Still, Mr. Graham and his publisher deserve well indeed of' the reading public in giving us so excellent and well edited a resume of the famous history which, written in 1568, and preserved in MSS. for 400 years _ in Guatemala, affords so many curious and interesting pictures of the greatest adventure of tho famous old Conquista.dors. (Price 10s.)