To Julius Haast   15th July 1863¹

15^th July 1863

My dear Sir.

I have received your letter and the newspaper which accompanied it,² contrary the account of your last adventurous expedition.³ I read your account with great interest, and I inferred from it that you were adapted in a special degree for the exploration of strange lands. When all your wanderings & observations are put together in a connected form they will I doubt not be read with very great <in>terest in England.

I am just on the point of starting for the Alps, where I purpose spending the next five or six weeks. I never tire of the mountains. They are to me objects of perennial pleasure, and I feel besides that each year they make me a new man and send me back to London fitted for London work. Were I several years younger I should entertain the thought of going over to New Zealand for I certainly should like to see those mountains of which you give so animated a description.

Right or wrong the action of glaciers has had an importance ascribed to it of late years which though it has excited strong opposition has nevertheless many able supporters. I suppose you have seen my friend Ramsay’s paper⁴ on the origins of the Lakes of Switzerland. Ramsay ascribes them to the scooping action of the glaciers of former days. The idea is a hardy one, but it is certainly deserving of attention & the arguments which may be adduced in its favour are by no means easy to refute.

Is it your intention to publish a connected and complete work on the topography of New Zealand? I certainly think that out of such material as you are now collecting a most interesting work might be produced.

Wishing you health and strength to pursue your arduous labours.

believe me dear Sir | most truly yours | John Tyndall

Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, MS-Papers Turnbull 0037-143