Not caring to follow in the wake of others, Mr. Fitzgerald left Aorangi alone, but Zurbriggen climbed thither on his own account in 1895. An Anglo-Colonial party gained the top ten years later, so that the ice-cap may now almost be classed among familiar spots. Still, as late as 1906 something still remained to be done on the mountain--namely, to go up on one side and go down on the other. This feat, so simple to state, but so difficult to perform, was accomplished last year by three New Zealanders and an Englishman. To make sure of having time enough, they started from their camp--which was at a height of between 6000 and 7000 feet on the eastern side--three-quarters of an hour before midnight. Hours of night walking followed over moonlit snows, looked down upon by ghostly crests. When light came the day was fine and grew bright and beautiful,--so clear that looking down they could see the ocean beyond the eastern shore, the homesteads standing out on the yellow-green plains, and on the snows, far, very far down, their own footprints dotting the smooth whiteness beneath them. It took them, however, nearly fourteen hours to reach the summit, and then the most dangerous part of their work only began. They had to gain the Hooker glacier by creeping down frosted rocks as slippery as an ice-slide. Long bouts of step-cutting had to be done, and in places the men had to be lowered by the rope one at a time. Instead of reaching their goal--the Hermitage Inn below the glacier--in twenty hours, they consumed no less than thirty-six. During these they were almost incessantly in motion, and as a display of stamina the performance, one imagines, must rank high among the exertions of mountaineers. Many fine spectacles repaid them. One of these, a western view from the rocks high above the Hooker glacier, is thus described by Mr. Malcolm Ross, who was of the party:-- “The sun dipped to the rim of the sea, and the western heavens were glorious with colour, heightened by the distant gloom. Almost on a level with us, away beyond Sefton, a bank of flame-coloured cloud stretched seaward from the lesser mountains towards the ocean, and beyond that again was a far-away continent of cloud, sombre and mysterious as if it were part of another world. The rugged mountains and the forests and valleys of southern Westland were being gripped in the shades of night. A long headland, still thousands of feet below on the south-west, stretched itself out into the darkened sea, a thin line of white at its base indicating the tumbling breakers of the Pacific Ocean.” [Illustration: THE TASMAN GLACIER]