CHAPTER I.
THE START.
To youth there comes a whisper out of the west
O loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee
A life to build, a love therein to nest
And a Man’s work serving the age to be.
Peace, peace awhile! before his tireless feet
Hill beyond hill the road in sunlight goes,
He breathes the breath of morning clear and sweet
And his eyes love the high eternal snows.
For some months we had been sojourning in the City of the Plains, and as summer drew on and wide roads grew dusty, and the freshness faded from trees and gardens, a great longing grew up in our hearts for the cool, dim forests, for the snow peaks, and blue glacier rivers: and little by little the plan grew. The first seeds of it were sown far away in South Westland by our black-bearded friend at the Haast. We remembered how he had fired our fancy by his glowing descriptions of a region where scarcely any one but their Survey party had penetrated; we remembered his talk of ice-caves and waterfalls, but above all we remembered how he talked of “a great Silver Cone against the blue,” and in the dusty city that Silver Cone drew us irresistibly. We would go and see it.
Nothing to me comes up to these free wanderings
