those in Switzerland. The Great Tasman Glacier, which Green and his companions had to traverse from end to end, is longer and wider than the Mer de Glace. Like most New Zealand glaciers of its kind, its surface is covered with rock and stones, the débris of the mountains, which made the journey very toilsome. Mt. Cook is 12,350 feet in height, but as the perpetual snow level is much lower here than in Switzerland, there is as much ice and snow to be tackled as in a mountain of fifteen thousand feet elsewhere. After trying in vain to make an ascent from either end of the mountain, they made their way across the slopes which descend from the highest peak, and thence on to the southern shoulder, from which they reached the ice-cap on the top, but were brought up by a deep. steep-sided trench in the ice, within about one hundred feet of the actual summit. It was nearly dark; bad weather was coming on; there was no time to cut steps down and up again out of the trench, so they reluctantly turned back and found a sort of shelter all night under a projecting rock. "There," said Green to me, as he sat in my study, on a Sunday evening after Service, on his return, "There, we had just as much standing ground as you might have on your hearth-rug holding on to the mantelpiece,—three of us, roped together, all night, with nothing but a few meat lozenges, pipes without tobacco, and an abyss of thousands of feet behind us." In the dim morning light they made their way down to their nearest camp, but with great risk, having to cross snow bridges over crevasses which were rapidly thawing. For a month they had not been heard of, since their departure from the nearest sheep station. Green published an account of his ascent, illustrated by excellent sketches of his
