AMONG THE SOUTHERN ALPS.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XXV, Issue 7167, 7 March 1892, Page 3

AMONG THE SOUTHERN ALPS.

1.-THE MUELLKK GLACIER. Hrhb we are ou the inorainp, lmviug scaled iho "terminal face" of thoghioior. A grim place—hugo mounds, strep peaks, aud hollows of groy rock and shifting stone?, with aves mxl cliffs of solid ice, discoloured and glassy. r >ut of tli e dark* ness ot one cave rushes the torrent, white with foam and loud with thunder, whirling ovpi , the boulders and sweeping away grenfc blocks of ice that keep break, ing and falling in loud sound from the cliff above. One block lice in the etream fretted into fautastio shapes by tho rush of rhe water, glistening like a huge mass ofdiamouds, Rising out of the dismal moraine are steep mountain", balf hidden by douse fogs. High up, faint sunlight shows patches of snow among the gloom, a dim promise of thnt world that lies behind and above this terrible place this uninhabited Inferno. A dreary rain beats ceaselessly over the whole region. The tongues of ceuturio3 cauuot describe thi« scene. The only memories that can live here are thoEe of the Old Testament, the "Inferno" of the stern Italian, or the Greek Prometheus.

i -2.~ON.THE MORAINE OP THE ■ GKBATTABMANGUOIBR. ! The description of this place should be 1 in prose—prose such as that through which we catch the majesty of Hebrew i prophet and psalmist; such as that which raises Milton's sublimest passages high abo\e poetry, For hero the loftiest spirit of feigning stands appalled ; hero imagU nation is out-soared, and only an! unspeakable wonder possesses soul and mind, Faith falters before tho ovidenoos of mighty works and uncounted ages, and religion would vainly interpret tho oracles of rock aud stone, and ice and snow. What spirit toils here uight and day, restlessly, unceasiugly \ The great glacier with its billowy mounds of ice is travelling on, inch by inch, Ceaselessly the blue streams run from its side, tho white crevasses widen and deepen ; from moment to moment thcro fall blocks of ice and loosened boulders down the frozen cliffs; far oil: on tho distant peaks the avalanches sweep from tho piled ridges of the sdow, and are gone. Old glaciers have vanished, rivers have changed their courses, the solid mountains have been shaken aud rent with chasms and clefts; still they toil and strive. Here is ceaseless change, motion, and sound,—sound of the cataract and the rivor, shrieks of the koa at night, echoes from tho moraine's steep walls of atones, Is there not here a life thai mocks our breath ?-— a life neither all good*-for what beneficence could produco such works of terror and destruction?-uor all lovely, for that valley of atones is desolato alike in tho blaze of noon aud iu the whiteness of moonlight—yet always and for over mightier than we, having power to destroy the body, to astound tho mind and trouble the soul. Tkt the life of these mountains is other thuu ours, this we know ; but who daro name tho life inferior 1 . Who on this glacier's verge, where all the wleufc peaks stand ranged white and invincible against the blue heaven, who would not bow the hoad, acknowledging human insignificance and the might of these mountaiue which it is indeed permitted us to gaze upon but uever, to comprehend ?

3.-A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW-LAKE PUKAKI, Lake Pukaki lies below the hill path we are travelling--a magic mirror of ■mother and more heavenly world : one vast unruffled sheet of blue, with all the visible peaks of snow, the lovely Alpine region, reflected in it. Not a curve, not a dome of enow, not a white slope or edge is lost. There among the shaggy hills of tussock and the rugged mountains lies this gem of turquoise water, a miracle of beauty in the perfect light of the morning, too lovely for tho imagination that has not seen even to conceive.— Edith Stai'le Grossraanu, in the Otago Witness.