OUR HOMELAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20420, 23 November 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR HOMELAND.

|j Br ILSIB K. MORTON. •

BEAUTIFUL SOUTH WESTLANd. FRANZ JOSEF GLACIER. Pixie and Pat and thair guide, now on foot, were walking slowly alorit; tho lovely forest track that leads to tho foot of Franz Josef Glacier. Tho luxuriance of the ferns and mosses, the littlo wild flowers growing beside the truck, we,?o a revelation to the children, and tho sight of a bower of Prince of Wales feather fern, with plumy fronds nearly a yard long, drew from them criqs of delight. "What a beautiful forest!" exclaimed Pixie. "Surely it must bo the most beautiful in all Now Zealand ?" " Well, it certainly is one of the best, but the forests of South Westiarid nro all lovely, and there is another forest track very much tho samo as this leading to Fox Glacier, about twenty miles distant. Tho moist, warm climate of West land is jdeul for ferns and mosses, and they arc more luxuriant and beautiful hero than in any part of .Nnv Zealand. If you look up, you will see how tho trees are draped with ferns." Kidney ferns and crcpo ferns, and many others that the twins had never seen before, grew on the tree-trunks and hung down from every lonnch. " Just like fine lace," said Pixie. And that was, indeed, a very good simile. Presently, the party came out of the forest, and made their way across the bed j of (ho Wniho River, which urns from the. foot of the glacier. " Goodness! How can we ever climb up those cliffs?" cried Pixie, looking up at the gl'cv rampart of stones and mountain debris that tho glacier had brought down with it in its tumultous descent from the mountains. But there was an easy track up, and soon Pixie and Pat woro making their way up the glacier in the tracks of a party that had preceded them. Tho face of tho glacier was not smooth and whitq, as it had appeared from a distance, but very rough and broken, with great columns and pinnacles of ice rising from the edge of tho track and deep crevasses reaching down into perilous depths. But it was the colour of the ico that held tho children in amazement. " 1 always thought ice was clear, with no colour at all," said Pat, " but this ice is. liko —like —" Ho hesitated, for ho had never in his life seen anything like the oxquisito blue of this glacier ice. " It's like blue bells," said Pixio suddenly, " deep coloured blue-bells, all frosted over with ice." And, indeed, that seemed nearer to tho wonderful colour of the glacier than anything clso they could think of. After climbing for some time, they came out through the icc cliffs and pinnacles to a level part of tho glacier, and as tjjey stood thero gazing upon its wonders, tho guido told them something of the formation of a glacier. The pressure of snow at tho head of the glacier caused more and more ice to form, so that tho ico was gradually forced down toward level ground at the toot of the mountain rarge. 44 But the glacier does not move, does it i iisked I at. " Yes it. certainly does, although it appears to bo quite stationary. The movement of a glacier'can be definitely measured, and in several cases where men have lost their lives in avalanches and other disasters tho bodies have been recovered aftor many years, brought down by the slow movement of tho glacier. "Why is the face of the glacier so rough and broken ?" was Pat's next question. " Well, vou know how broken the surface of a river is when it flows ovor a steep, broken bed and forms rapids," replied the guide. bornething liko the same action takes place 111 a glacier. The Iranz Josef, as yr.u can sec. Ilows down through a narrow mountain gorge at a very steep angle, over a rough bed. and tho ico is constantly being forced up into fantastic shapes bv tho pressure behind it and tho unevenness of the ground over which it Hows. It is really ono of tho most beautiful and interesting glaciers in the world, for it descends nine thousand feet in a little over eight miles, and the terminal face is less than 700 ft, abovo sea-level. No other glacier in the world, save the 1< ox, flows down into a semi-tropical region of forest and fern In suinmer time, tlieso steep mountain sides are red with rata bloom, and high up on the should.! of Mount Moltko. which you can see just above us, is a lovely almne £ al '« e "- Now I think wo had better go down, as we must have a look a« the box, too, before wo leave South Westland.'