ADVENTURES IN THE HIGH ALPS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 10601, 22 February 1896, Page 2

ADVENTURES IN THE HIGH ALPS.

By a Gkeen Hand,

Chapter v—john uuinn'and other op the

MOUNT COOK FAUNA,

An off day, on which under pretext of a general weariness in one's bones, one may give one's self up to loafing, to observing the local fauna, and enjoying the foil flavour of Mount Cook solitude. The Hermitage is a place where you get the full taste of solitude—tho distances are so magnificent. Not every hermit has 35"rooms all to himself, and some of them, too, anfcres vast for size. AVhen" 1 draw in my chair to my solitary meal in the spacious dining-hall I" feel myself to be a mare pitiable 'speck 'of mortality; and ifc is no manner of nse to push up the partition aperture that communicates with the kitchen in the hope of mitigating the solitude, for this latter apattment is also so vast thafc if Mrs Ad'ainsan'happehs to be at tha other end -she almost vanishes in the perspective, and you have to "coo-ee." Here, having incidentally made mention of my hostess and the kitchen, let me gratefully record that Mrs Adamson, besides being a kind and admirable woman, is an excellent cook. No epicure am I, or gourmand '_ either; ', but 1 hope I can tell os well as another when mutton is well cooked. Mrs Adamson cooks it a merveille. And in cooking mutton well Mrs Adamson may be said to cook everything well, for here mutton is everything, flab, flesh,'and fowl.: Sometimes ifc is a.rochemoutpnnieoi roast shoulder showing fche billowy undulations of years of " wefchering " ; or an erratic boulder of boiled leg (tender as chicken) resting on a glacier of clear sauce,, with a morainic deposit of. capers. In this place it may be as well to record for the benefit of science a fact hitherto, to the best of my belief, unnoted by .any other scientific observer—that the, Mount Cook sheep have each of them two tails. ' Ifc is. true that I had no chance of examining tho living animal, bub I have observed that each leg of. mutton as it came to table had a tail attached. . Clearly, therefore, each two legs «when they formed one corporate body must have h»d two tails between them. Thafc is self-evident enough one would think. But to return to the gastronomy of Mount Cook. Mrs Adamson's chef-d'auvreli unquestionably the cutlet; or dismissing tbe diminutive as, in the circumstances, inexact and inadequate, let us call it, rather, a cub; or, as approaching perhaps more closely to the fact, let ua even use the old and homely augmentative—chop. Mrs Adamson's most excellent workmanship, where all is excellent, is the chop—or rather perhaps, to be precise,l two chops,—for there is certainly a satisfactory completeness in two chops that is nofc found in one, and yet an absence of that satiety that is found in three. Mere pedestrian prose is no-fit instrument with which to celebrate Mrs Adamson's cutlets. To do them justice they want a series of sonnets : the swelling hummocks of flesh nestling against and supported by an outcropping arete of bono; and, filling up the crevasses and _. ponring down the. couloirs, 'an unctuous flow of gravy of that warm brown seen nowhere else except in the faces of saints ih the pictures of the old masters. Such are the marvels of Mrs Adamson's handiwork when Bhe chooses to cook mutton as mutton ; but if perchance you should tire of mutton, she will cook it you so that you would swear before a justice of the peace that it was beef. This she does by enclosing lb in a dish, or, as ib were, alembic, beneabh a dome of pie-orusb cunningly decorated; in , alto-relievo, thereby in soma occult way—probably a mystery even to herself—effecting a Subble change of the essential particles or ultimate atoms, and so transmuting that whioh erstwhile was flesh of sheep into flesh of beeves., ■..-••"■

As to Adamson himself, what chiefly impresses me so far is the devotional element in his character. As yet, it is true, I have seen nothing "distinctly Christian about him. On the contrary, I shrewdly Buspect him to be a Pagan, with Mount Cook for the god of his idolatry. But he worships faithfully according to his lights. The. Hermitage is so situated thafc one has only to go out at the back gate to see whatever is visible of Mount Cook; and every evening Adamsou watches his deity afar off, and, like a pious muezzin, advises men of the proper momenb to pay their respects to his godship. As the shades of evening fall, and the sun declines behind Mount Ollivier, I draw my chair up by the comfortable wood fire and read something light enough for a tired man, or perchance even write bhese trusty memoirs; unwilling to stir or be disturbed for a thousand Mount Cooks. Bub Adamson, regardless of seasons, will break into the room with,' " Oh, Mount Cook is glorious, his cheeks are red with the setting sun ! A?ou must'come and see him," or "Mount Cook ia in wonderful condition to-night, visible from top -to toe, .not a cloud," and so on. Inwardly I anathematise Mount Cook ; but, bsing naturally of an amiable disposition, I go oub in my slippers, ■- getting wet ' feet on the way, and arrive at the place of worship to fiud that the glow has vanished from off Cook's face except the extreme tip of his nose ; or lhat he has put ou his cap preparatory to retiring for the night. I am invariably too late for Adamson's" Cook effects, but nothing disennrajjfid he is on the alert next ovorune. and

so da capo. The Hermitage cows go to get milked where Adamson can conveniently gaze at Mount Cook ; and, indeed, I have seen tha cows themselves gazing at the mountain, and ruminating, apparently, with large speculative eyos as to the best spot on which to establish a bivouac. Adamson is a polytheist. His mountain deities form, as it were, a heavenly hierarchy, Mount Cook occupying the supreme place, but Mount Sefton and Da la Beche running him hard.

Find I am wrong in supposing that Mr and Mrs Adamson are the only permanent inmates of the Hermitage. There is another resident — a young man of the name of John Quinn, small of stature but of much consequence. Jahn Quinn is a philosopher in his way, of the peripatetic school, the chief corner stone of his philosophy consisting in a knowledge of what he wants and how to get it. I was flrst made aware of John's existence by an unmistakable patter in the passages, where ho takes much active exercise ; also By certain iua.rticul.ite sounds in the distant regions of the kitchen—sounds which clearly could not have proceeded from Mrs Adamson. Johu Quinn is mutable as to his moods. Sometimes he regards the world, and myself iv particular,- with disapproval; and then I know it is "gums." Afc other times ha beams; and then you would think the sun shone, though all the time'the Professor might be swearing at the weather. John is rather a nice-looking young chap—wifch the usual complement of features : eyes as blue its cave ics, two little hanging glaciers of cheeks, a trifle, whiter perhaps than they need ba, a little redlipped crevasse of mouth running transversely above his chiu, and in the centre of all a piquant littlo star-ypointing Matfcsrhorn of nose. John Quinn is chiefly remarkable for his dimples—his face is pitted with them like an jceSeld ; but thero is one especially, deep pit'on the left cheek, as large, relatively to ths whole mass, as the Professor's " bergschrund." I am sometimes alarmed in these alpine regions lest John may have a fall and hurt himself, more especially, when he has to descend.from one dangerous elevation to another. Bat that is my inexperience. To see John Qiiinn negotiate fche step that le&ds from the dining-room to ths corridor is to be convinced .that he has all the instincts of the born mountaineer. No carelessness, ho haste, no flurry ; laying himself flat on his "tummy," he carefully lowers the. nether half of him, and, that once secure, proceeds triumphantly to transfer the upper half to the safer level. Johu Quinn's vocabulary is nofc cxten.ive : it consists mainly of .the phrase " google-oogle " (so rendered phonetically by the Professor, with whom he was a favourite), which is currently bslieved in the family circle to be an onomatopoeia' for "tucker." Johu Quinn is in the main a moral and well-behaved young man. It is true that he sometimes plants a cache of saucepan lids, but this he is believed to do not wifch any felonious infection but in order that Mrs Adamson may have the pleasant recreation of hunting for them. Occasionally, bowever, he does things that might be considered reprehensible in any strict order of society. Late at night, for instance, when all is still, and nothing shirring except a -nocturnal woidhen or so, John Quinn will make a sudden irruption into the sisdug-room, arrayed simply in what is technically called a " nightie," and, to aggravate ths enormity, holding up his skirt so as to display his feet and ankles; of which, I admit, he may pardonably be vain, for they are as numerously dimpled as his face. Altogether Johu Quinn is a great power afc the Hermitage ; though, if I were Adamson, I should be jealous of the way he goes on with Mrs Adimson, >

One circumstance disbinguishes Mount Cook from any other inhabited spot on the face of the globe ; there you never hear a, cock crow. Thafc detestable bird of morning is fco be found no nearer than the Birch Hill stition, if even there, and it is holiday to be rid of bim. The place of tha domestic fowl ia supplied by a family of wekas—father, mother, and. three infants. One is awakened of a morning by a knocking under the house, a kind of tapping as if someone were testing the soundoesi of the piles. But it is only the weka fitnily hunting for the early worm! You may see the old birds fossicking about in front of fche window, tearing up the soil apd manure boips with their strong beaks,, and finding evidently a plentiful harvest of worms, which they always deliver to their chicks, like auy civilised Christian bird. They seem fco be quite as tama as barndoor fdwls, peering ab you inquisitively and im-pud-ntly if you approach them, and uttering their peculiar cluck or grunt, the sound I had mistaken for tapping. Ib is impossible to say whether they are diurnal or nocturnal birds; matutinal, I should say, for though you may hear their nofc nnmusical call-notes after dark, and see them inseeb-huubing during the day, the early hours of morning seem to be the time of their greabesb activity. It is surprising fco note the number of English birds in fche, vicinity of the Hermit-age. The house sparrow, like the Gallus domesticus, has fortunately not yet taken to mountaineering." But the chaffinch appears to be plentiful. Ou my first sunny morning here I heard it! obeery little ditty—" This, this, this, this—this is the way I do ifc! " —coming from various parts of the thick copse thafc covers tha base of AVhite Horse Hill. Green linnets appear to be plentiful; the goldfinch is also here; and skylarks soar and sing above the bed of the Tasman-river. I have heard a blackbird sing on the very edge of tha Mueller glacier ; and the starling has bnilfc iv the Hermitage roof this year for the first time. Native birds are fairly plentiful in the Mount Cook region, though there are curious omissions. There appear to be no tuis or bell-birds, and hence the bush is unusually silent. The mosfc familiar notes are tbe scream of the kea and the call-note of the wekii I specially looked to make the acquaintance of the bash wren (Xenicus longipes), aud even possibly the rock wren (X. gilvirenfcris) ; bat not a feather of either bird hive I seen for all my watching. The yellow-breasted tit is here, bufc I have seen no traces of the wood robin, probably because I have not gone much into the bash. The grey warbler is here, and the waxeye, of course. The pretty native gcoundlark may perhaps be considered tho genius of these solitudes. In the great glacier valley where there reigns the desolation of sterility aud death, where not the bleat of a sheep is heard, and evea the harrier thinks ib not worth his while to hunt, you may hear the pipit's monotonous note as it parches near you on a boulder of the moraine— the only thing to remind you that there is a living being in the world besides yourself. It seems to love society, this bird, whether of men or horses, for ib will ■ frisk and play along the road in front of a coach for considerable distances. Besides the kea parrot there are parrakSats and kakas in this neighbourhood, for though I have seen none I have heard their notes.

I had looked forward to seeing something of the native ducks, bufc have seen less of them than I could have wished. As wa came up from Pukaki we passed a fine fleet of paradise ducks swimming across a lagoon bf the Tasman —two old birds and a brood of nine half-grown ducklings. They moved as warily and in aa perfect order as a British fleet in sight of the enemy. In front sailed the mother, with russet tody and white head and neck; then followed the nine smaller craft; and the drake brought up the rear. Further on a black teal with three half-grown young was feeding in a pool by tho roadside. The blue duck is a characteristic inhabitant of the headwaters of the Tasman. Its cry is mosfc unducklike, being a soft and somewhat prolonged -whistle, half interrogative, half exclamatory. Oue evening ab dusk we heard one of these birds ou tha stream iv front of tho Hermitage. Adamson aud myself went out to interview the bird, which, far from being alarmed at our approach, seemed curious to know something about'us. Adamson imitated ita cry aud the duck responded, iv evident indignation ab bhe bad' imitation. He fluttered his handkerchief and the duck approached in narrowing circles, in a fever of curiosity. IE the blue duck is as foolish as this in the open season I wonder that many specimens are left.

It is nobiceable that sea-birds fiud their way in* numbers as far inland as Mount Cook. The Dominican gull may be seen flying above the glaciers. Oyster-catchers and dotterels frequent the creeks arid river beds. But fche taoat beautiful and interesting of all these is a tern that frequents inconsiderable numbers the swamps of the Mackenzie country and the bed of the Tasman river. Ifc is a bird wifch a grey body, black head, and yellow bill, and is about fche s:ze of a pigeon (Sterna frontalis, I think). In build and manner of flight ifc is remarkably like a Bwallow, except that occasionally it hovers over one spot for a few seconds somewhat in the manner of a hawk. It is a pretty sight to see these birds sporting over the blue water of the Tasman, sweeping round in long, graceful curves, now high, now low, and every now and theu swooping down to the surface of fche stream and scooping the water wifch their bills. I suppose they rest sometimes, but I have not seen auy of them alight on the ground or on any perch, nor for all their foraging bave they ever seemed to me to succeed in finding anything eatabla. No doubt the bird of chief interest at Mount Cook is tha kea parrot (Nestor notabllis). AVhat it lives ou, goodness knows. There are grasshoppers and lizstrds galore, aud a great crop of muhlenbeck'ia ond other berries in the river flats. If the relish of kidney fat is a sine qud nan, ib cannot be got any nearer than the Birch Hill Station, and I very much question whether the Mount Cook birds go bo far aSold for their fodder. Bufc as far as my observation goes the kea seems to want but little here below if only he can fiud the means of gratifying his insatiable curiosity ; and I incline to think that fche habit of tearing the skin of fche living sheep arose iv the first instance not from any anatomical knowledge on the bird's part, but from its inborn spirit of investigation and love of tearing with its.bill anything soft. Having, however, once found its excavations repaid with such a toothsome morsel as kidney fat, the kea is much too wise a bird not to fiud its way back to the larder. Keas come wheeling about the Hermitage in twos and threes, though Adamson tells me they appear sometimes in large numbers. Their slaughter, approved and encouraged on tbe various runs, is forbidden here, and ridi.lz* for they form

part of the interest of tW place. The attraction for these birds at fche Hermitage is a captive kea chained near the firewood pile. The wild birds oome down, probably fco talk scandal and discuss Hermitage affairs, on which the prisoner keeps an attentive eye all day long. 'These birds perch'on anything, the ground, a fence, a rock, or the bouse roof; bufc I have never before seen them light on trees; they cannot, however, be said to perch on the branches, bufc flop down olumsily on the treetop, trusting to providence for something to cling fco. They ars extraordinary birds, and I for one believe all the wonderful things that have been told of them. I had myself a narrow escape from these birds, no later than yesterday, and as the incident affords conclusive scientific proof of the partiality of the kea for kidney fat, I may here record it. I had better perhaps mention to begin with that I am myself of a';>lump habit, and further thafc these birds have had ample opportunity of perceiving this, for I have seen them attentively watching me as I sauntered round tho Hermitage, though little I dreamt what was passing the while iv their evil minds. Well. I came homeyesterdayfrom the Hooker Valley, drenched to the skin. Of course I changed my clothes at once, and Mrs Adamson hung my wot garments on the back fence to dry. Amongst these garments was a —why should I hesitate to confess ifc ?—was a shirt. Now, this garment had bsen no time banging on the fence when down came a kea, and began picking a hole above tho kidney ! I shudder to think that I might have been inside thafc shirt, as, no doubt, the kea tbought I was. Some importance attaches fco the tact thafc the shirt was a merino.