Tasman Glacier

Tasman Glacier

The names of Abel Tasman and James Cook have been conferred on the country’s two highest mountains. The highest, Mt Cook (also known as Aoraki), was named from the sea by Captain John Lort Stokes of the Acheron in 1851, while that vessel was engaged on the country’s first systematic hydrographical survey. In 1862 a Canterbury explorer, Julius von Haast, named the second highest peak and the country’s largest glacier after Tasman. In that same year, Haast sketched this view looking up the Tasman Glacier, with Aoraki (Mt Cook) to the left.