ICEBERGS ON LAKE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18332, 26 February 1934, Page 6

ICEBERGS ON LAKE

SOUTH ISLAND FIND ROUGH MOUNTAINOUS AREA There exists in New Zealand an unnamed lake in South Westland, with number's of icebergs, the size of a • house,. '-floating on its • surface or grounded on. its shores. This was vouched for by Captain G. F. Yercx, an officer of the Department of Internal Affairs, who is in charge of the doerkilling operations throughout the South I Island, states the Christehureh Star. .! Men employed on one of the parties 5 came across the* lake in almost im- , penetrable country, after two days by j packhorse and two days’ hard slogging jon foot. A tongue of the Hooker , Glacier reaches right down to the [ lake, huge pieces of the glacier break--1 ing off. I ’ Captain Yerex stated that it was a >. | most beautiful spot, Avith the blue of ; the water merging into the gleaming i whiteness of the icebergs, and the i glacier plunging down the mountain--1 side under the water of the lake. Some r of the icebergs, he said, were as big ' as a good-sized house. I “To get at it,” he said, “our men 1 had a two days’ journey with packI horses from Makarora. to their base [ camp, and following that a two days’ ’ journey on foot over Otoko Pass.” The ' lake was come upon accidentally, and . personally he had never heard of it 1 before. The country in that locality L was not thoroughly mapped, although the main ridges were given. The > nearest habitation was Okuru township. j In the operations of the various par--1 ties in the far back country of New Zealand, they had encountered several unnamed lakes in various places. One of them was in the vicinity of Burke ; River, and another in the upper reaches of Cox’s Poulter, which had apparently been formed by a big slip at the time of the 1939 Arthur’s Pass earthquake. Others had been described in that locality, but that lake was not reported. As a matter of fact, the men had named it after him. “I have been told,” said Captain Yerex, “that something more permanent should have been chosen to bear my name, as the lake may disappear with the next . ’quake.” There tvas a lot of unmapped country round those parts. |== ■ =