Mount Cook.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14216, 4 June 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

Mount Cook.

{Bj B. E. Baughen.)

ROUSD ABOLT TUB HKKMITAGJi. (Copyright.)

I. "Why, I never knew that people living 111 New Zealand went to sfe Mount Cook!' 7 an ingenuous Now Zealand girL protested to the writer the other day. ••! thought only tile regular tourists ever did that —the English and Australian ones, you know, she added by way of explanation. Heaven send the dear child herself to Mount Cook, no later than the very next season, and so help her out of that erior; and may no other New Zealander, young or old. native-l>orn or naturalised, fall into it and the impious resignation it engenders. For. if as a nation we are still unremarkable for any great love of art. the love of. Nature, on the other hand. is. happily. rooted in us. living and sound and strong:: and that being so, the region cf Aorangi is our proper Mecca, ''which not to have visited should be either our sorrow or our shame.'''

Hut it is such an expensive trip? Let us save up for it. then: five years, or ten. or twenty, if need be: it is'worth saving for.

But the Hermitage is always so crowded ?

In the height of the season, so it- is: and the Government ought to s<-e to it —Rumour says, is seeing to it already. But why go in the height of the season? In Xovembrr the snows are stili near, and the lilies in bloom ; in late March and in April the weather is commonly at its kindest.

But oughtn't- one to be wonderfully aireand f"arful!y athletic? Probablv. if one hones to scale :>t C'rok. Otherwise —e-in you manage an ordinary five-mile walk without- exhaustion? For. a so, with the help of the mountain air, and a dav or twos training on the soot, vou TV-ill be able to acquire '"rich eyes" up yonder without any difficulty.

Well. then, what is there to see?

Ah, now v<- aro coming t-> it: and ; n.w the writer begins *■> '>e in trouble: j for who shall put Set ton into ;i sn- i or irytt -11i--e into a t l 1 e : Ho-ehstetter Fall? Xo ordinary traf-| fieker in wo -ds, at anyr.it'>: and, ! therefore.. all that these articles can j aim at is the conveying of a Muxgr-s- I tion that at least thrrc is something j in ■ the ncisjhbimrln'cd of Mount Cook i that is worth tho seeing—and ran yon ; do better than try to no and look at it through your own eyes? Let us suppose, then. that we are well upon our way to the Hermitage, and that for half a day we have been travelling across the hill-girt tu.ssocky plains of the Mackenzie Country. This district, often maligned, lias a very real beauty of its own, the beauty hern of free space, and widp air and sky, ot i vrystnl light- and cloud-shadows of v'i- I vet: hut -we have become, pc-rliaps. a j little unresponsive to it by the time we reach Lake l'ukaki. i'here, hi wever, given a line tl.iv, all is • hang, d ; for yoikler. far away acros= the stretch of bluish water, there crosses and tumbles a new world—of rigid and i Uo\ ng snows, out- of the midst of which., aloof, detached. a monarch, one crest rises and rises and overtops all the others. It is Mount Cook himself, that lofty pyramidal peak Aorangi. true "Light in the Sky." And in some respects we shall never better this view of him. far-off though it may be, for it emphasises duly his characteristic solitariness, Ills supremacy. Another three hours or so and we are at the threshold of the enows; we have reached tho Hermitage, where, come we early or come we late, a hospitable -•welcome greets, us. To have the wrong folk at tho Hermitage would be a national calamity; and long may the present family remain in charge. Hut if the evening still keeps fine, do not let the 'friendliest ministrations hold lis within doors at sunset. For who shall say how many more fine evenings we shall have; how many more chances of the feast of glory waiting, not twenty yards from the house, tor our enrichment—the vision, namely, of Aorangi sunset-flushed, a tremendous tower, an immense unwavering flame of solid 6almon-rose, burning and glowing there beforo us, away, up, up in the pure blue evening sky. From the present Hermitage itself one Cannot- see Mount Cook. The building lies sis it were within a fork, of which the left prong is the valley of the Mueller Glacier, tho right that of the Hooker, at the further end of ■which Mount Cook towers up. concealed, however, from tho Hermitage outlook by a. small hill close to the house.

But another great mountain, away t-o the left makes amends. Hungry indeed must- be those eyes that the grandeur of'Sefton cannot- satisfy. Xo tower, solitary-rising like Aonmgi. hut a great massed ridge of white, culminating to one side in a sharp peak, he cits enthroned up there above the valley, lsis snowftelds glistening in the stin, his black precipices streaming with great glaciers, a gigantic presence unsurpassed in grandeur, so say experienced judges, by any mountain in the Alps of Switzerland. And—Scfton at sunrise! Whatever else we are to sec. let us never miss seeing that. The evening slorv 011 Aorangi itself is less glorious, inasmuch as there is less i f mass to l>e illumined. That immen-e glimmering white—that- first deep stain of crimson on the extreme crest —then the spreading flood of rosy-red. alternating as it flows, to gold—finnl'v whole lit nresence above, while still the valley lies in shadow. Whv. Sefton at- sunrise is liv himself worth the whole journey to the Alps. Now let us turn our backs for ;i moment upon botn Seiton and Aorangi, anil look tiown tue vaiU-y up wmcii we canto from i J ukaiu —the handle of our "fork." Tiie walls ot tins valley are

of snow-capped green and S^rey: a • oouplo or more of miles below the , Hermitage, it begins to widen out into ; the mam vailey of the Tasmun; and 1 just before that point, at the base of ] one of tlie spurn on the right hand j looking; down, there is a .small, and very I welcome, bit of birch bush. Governor's i Bush; it is called: and from it, as from • Gleueoe, a little waterfall in a guily hard by. there is another splendid view .of Aorangi, the flittering, of its snows relieved, at once. and enhanced by a foreground of green and various bush. But the linest vicv>- obtainable in the near neighbourhood of tho Hermitage is inr-ontrstably that from Kea Point. abiStt- half an hum's walk away, in the direction of So i ton. The track leads up a kind of open glen, filled with shining alpine scrub —coprosma, koromiko. celeer-pine, dai'k totara and ca>sinia silvery-green. On the •round beneath, there is a second shining—of. long celmisia leave?, pure silver, of lily leafeiiDs that bold the sun, and gold "edged •■Spaniard" blades. At the right season, -what a land of lilies there must be, and mountain daisies! Beguiled by all this green brightness at our feet, ive stroll on and on. till suddenly. hapDening to look up—isn't that .a. splendid wliite cloud over there to the left A cloud? Why it enn't be, and vet—yes it is—Mount Cook himself, all up in the blue alone. And. onlv a' verv little farther np—ah, we catch our breatlis; for we have come out upon the brink of a sheer cliff, and there, right ahead, separated from us only by "tlio moraine-filled valley of the MueHe: below, rises the noble Moorhou.se Range, with all its snows and glaciers, culminating, immediately before us. in the mightme." of p-«Jt: while yonder, np the Hooker Vallev. owning on our right. there stands Aorangi, manifest no win lonely •wbience, and shines. The scale of this

outlook and its boldness; tin* i-onirast--1 in- ut "those mountain '■ maws. both s«> uraud: the >hi>crm\s* lot thoir awful the I «;[' their pnnty; tl) m'ont milt ol drop i hi no. sky between thorn; and the liHio kind and friendly presence <>i the tender flowers and <;roon things ;»t our loot; ail these things together make of ;Kea.' Point a place one docs not readily

forget. , And. do yon notice? It is within two mil' l -; of the Hermitage.