Peaks and Passes in New Zealand

Abstract

TEN years ago the ice scenery of the New Zealand Alps was almost unknown even to the colonists. But in 1882 the Rev. W. S. Green, with two first-class Swiss guides, explored the glacierregion beneath the highest peak—Aorangi,or Mount Cook—and arrived, after along, difficult, and dangerous climb, on the summit of that mountain. His delightful volume “The High Alps of New Zealand,” and the laborious explorations of Dr. von Lendenfeld in the following year, indicated that a region, certainly not inferior in grandeur and beauty to the Alps of Europe, could be reached in a journey of little more than two days from Christchurch. Since then the “Britain of the South” has become proud of possessing the “playground of Australasia”; the number of visitors has been rapidly increasing; an hotel has been built in a convenient situation near the foot of one of the glaciers; surveys have been undertaken; and the author of this volume, with one or two friends—inexperienced in mountain craft but inured to rough work in a wild country—commenced, in 1886, a series of expeditions in the “High Alps” of the Antipodes. With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps. By George Edward Mannering. With Illustrations. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891.)