^iiifi$5»:yv'>;- !-'■•■ ■
THE LAST SECRETS
The Summit of Mount Everest.
{By permission of the Mount Everest Committee.')
THE LAST SECRETS
The Final Mysteries of Exploration
By JOHN BUCHAN
I?(dQ 9q
7. 8. a
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, Ltd.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
Or
First Impression^ September igsj
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS
TO THE MEMORY OF
Brig.-Gen. CECIL RAWLING, C.M.G., CLE.
WHO FELL AT THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES
AN INTREPID EXPLORER
A GALLANT SOLDIER
AND THE BEST OF FRIENDS
PREFACE
The first two decades of the twentieth century will
rank as a most distinguished era in the history of
exploration, for during them many of the great
geographical riddles of the world have been solved.
This book contains a record of some of the main
achievements. What Nansen said of Polar explora-
tion is true of all exploration ; its story is a " mighty
manifestation of the power of the Unknown over the
mind of man." The Unknown, happily, will be always
with us, for there are infinite secrets in a blade of
grass, and an eddy of wind, and a grain of dust, and
human knowledge will never attain that finality when
the sense of wonder shall cease. But to the ordinary
man there is an appeal in large, bold, and obvious
conundrums, which is lacking in the minutice of
research. Thousands of square miles of the globe
still await surveying and mapping, but most of the
exploration of the future will be the elucidation of
details. The main fines of the earth's architecture
have been determined, and the task is now one of
amplifying our knowledge of the groyning and but-
tresses and stone-work. There are no more unvisited
viii PREFACE
forbidden cities, or unapproached high mountains, or
unrecorded great rivers.
" The world is disenchanted ; oversoon
Must Europe send her spies through all the land."
It is in a high degree improbable that many geograph-
ical problems remain, the solving of which will come
upon the mind with the overwhelming romance of
the unveilings we have been privileged to witness.
The explorer's will still be a noble trade, but it will
be a filUng up of gaps in a framework of knowledge
which we already possess. The morning freshness
has gone out of the business, and we are left with the
plodding duties of the afternoon.
Some of the undertakings described in these pages
have not been completed. The foot of man has not
yet stood on the last snows of Everest, or on the
summit of Carstensz. One notable discovery I have
not dealt with — the great Turfan Depression in the
heart of Central Asia, far below the sea level, the
existence of which was first established by the Russian,
Roborowski, before the close of last century, and the
details of which have been described by Sir Aurel
Stein in his Ruins of Desert Cathay and Serindia.
But Sir Aurel' s interest was chiefly in the antiquities
of the place, and the more strictly geographical
results have not yet been given to the world. To-
day, if we survey the continents, we find nothing
of which the main features have not been already
expounded. The Amazon basin might be regarded
PREFACE ix
as an exception, and only a little while ago men
dreamed of discovering among the wilds of the Bo-
livian frontier the remains, perhaps even the survival,
of an ancient civilization. It would appear that these
dreams are baseless. The late President Roosevelt
did, indeed, succeed in putting upon the map a new
river, the Rio Roosevelt, 1,500 kilometres long, of
which the upper course was entirely unknown, and
the lower course explored only by a few rubber col-
lectors — a river which is the chief affluent of the
Madeira, which is itself the chief affluent of the
Amazon. But now all the tributaries have been
traced, and though there is much unexplored ground
in the Amazon valley, it consists of forest tracts lying
between the rivers, all more or less alike in their
general character, and with nothing to repay the
explorer except their flora and fauna. Africa is now
an open book, even though many parts have been
little travelled. The map of Asia alone holds one
blank patch which may well be the last of the great
secrets — the Desert of Southern Arabia, which lies
between Yemen and Oman, 800 by 500 miles of water-
less sands. Long ago there were routes athwart it,
and hidden in its recesses some great news may await
the traveller. But its crossing wiU be a hazardous
affair for whoever undertakes it, since he will have to
lean upon the frail reed of milk camels for food and
transport. For the rest, the problems are now of
survey and scientific enquiry rather than of exploration
in the grand manner. .
X PREFACE
I have many acknowledgments to make. My
thanks are due in the first place to Mr. Charles Turley
Smith, who has contributed the chapters on Arctic
and Antarctic Exploration, subjects on which he is
specially equipped to write ; and, in order to put the
conquest of the two Poles in its proper hght, has
supphed a sketch of the long story of Polar exploration.
I am deeply indebted to Mr. Arthur R. Hinks, the
Secretary, and to Mr. Edward Heawood, the Librarian,
of the Royal Geographical Society for their help and
advice. I have also to express my thanks to Messrs.
Constable and Company for permission to reproduce
illustrations and to quote from works pubhshed by
them ; to Major G. H. Putnam and Messrs. Seeley,
Service, and Company for the same kindness ; to
Major F. M. Bailey, C.I.E., the British Pohtical
Officer in Sikkim, for the story of the Brahmaputra
Gorges ; and to my friends of the Mount Everest
Committee for their assent to my use of their beau-
tiful photographs of that mountain.
J. B.
CONTENTS
I. Lhasa 15
II. The Gorges of the Brahmaputra . . 45
III. The North Pole 59
IV. The Mountains of the Moon . . . 103
V. The South Pole 127
VI. Mount McKinley 179
VII. The Holy Cities of Islam .... 211
VIII. The Exploration of New Guinea . . 239
IX. Mount Everest 261
LIST OF PLATES
The Summit of Mount Everest .... Frontispiece
View of the Potala Monastery at Lhasa, with the Chortan
in the foreground 32
Ruwenzori from the Hill near Kaibo 116
The Valley to the West of Mount Baker . . . .120
Mount McKinley : View of the Southern Approach . 192
The Summit of Mount McKinley 200
View of Medina 224
View of Mecca 232
New Guinea Canoes 252
New Guinea Pygmies contrasted with ordinary Natives. 256
The massif of Mount Everest 280
The Chang La from the Lhakpa La, with Mount Everest
on the left 288
LIST OF MAPS
The Expedition to Lhasa 24
The Gorges of the Brahmaputra 48
North Polar Regions 80
The Peaks and Valleys of Ruwenzori 112
xili
xiv LIST OF MAPS
The Eoute to Ruwenzori 112
South Polar Regions 144
Mount McKinley 184
Wavell's Journey to Mecca 216
The Exploration of New Guinea 248
The Route of the Mount Everest Expedition . . . 272
LHASA
(2.369)
16
LHASA
{Map, p. 24.)
Till the summer of 1904 if one had been asked what
was the most mysterious spot on the earth's surface
the reply would have been Lhasa. It was a place on
which no EngHshman had cast an eye for a hundred
years and no white man for more than half a century.
Li our prosaic modern world there remained one city
among the clouds about which no tale was too strange
for beUef . The greatest of mountain barriers shut it
off from the south, and on the north it was guarded by
leagues of waterless desert. Explorer after explorer
had set out on the quest, but all had stopped short be-
fore the golden roofs of the sacred city could be
seen from any hill-top. Even in early days the place
had never been explored, for the visitors had been
jealously watched and hurried quickly away. In the
Potala might be treasures of a culture long hidden to
the world, lost treatises of Aristotle, unknown Greek
poems, relics, perhaps, of the mystic kingdom of
(2,869) 17 2
18 THE LAST SECRETS
Kubla Khan, riches of gold and jewels drawn from
the four comers of Asia
And then suddenly in 1904 we went there, not as
apologetic travellers taken by side paths, but as an
armed force marching along the highway to the very
heart of the mystery, and letting loose at once upon
the world a flood of accurate knowledge. For a mo-
ment we were carried centuries away from high politics
and every modern invention, and were back in the
great ages of discovery : with the Portuguese in their
quest for Ophir or Prester John, or with Raleigh look-
ing for Manoa the Golden. It was impossible for the
least sentimental to avoid a certain regret for the
drawing back of that curtain which had meant so
much to the imagination of mankind. The shrinkage
of the world goes on so fast, our horizon grows so pain-
fully clear, that the old untiring wonder which cast
its glamour over the ways of our predecessors is vanish-
ing from the lives of their descendants. With the un-
veiling of Lhasa feU the last stronghold of the older
romance.
Tibet had always been a forbidden land, and, as a
rule, adventurers only penetrated its fringes. Some-
LHASA 19
where about the year 1328 a certain Friar Odoric of
Pordenone, travelling from Cathay, is said to have
entered Lhasa ; and in the middle of the sixteenth
century, Fernao Mendes Pinto may have reached it.
In 1661 the Jesuits, Grueber and D'Orville, made a
journey from Peking to Lhasa, and thence by way of
Nepal into India. In the early part of the eighteenth
century there was a temporary unveiling, and a Ca-
puchin Mission was established in the Holy City. Vari-
ous Jesuits also reached the place, notably one Desideri ;
and in 1730 came Samuel Van der Putte, a Doctor of
Laws of Leiden, who stayed long enough to learn the
language. In 1745 the Capuchin Mission came to an
end, and the curtain descended. In 1774 George
Bogle of the East India Company was in Tibet on a
mission from Warren Hastings, but the first English-
man did not reach Lhasa till 1811, when Thomas
Manning, of Caius College, Cambridge, a friend of
Charles Lamb, arrived and stayed for five months
on his unsuccessful journey from Calcutta to Peking.
Till 1904 Manning was the solitary Englishman who
was known for certain to have entered the sacred city,
though there was a tale of one William Moorcroft reach,
ing the place in 1826, and living there for twelve years
in disguise. In 1844 the French missionaries. Hue
20 THE LAST SECRETS
and Gabet, reached Lhasa from China, and recorded
their experiences in one of the most delightful of aU
books of travel. They were the last Europeans to
have the privilege up to the entry of the British army.
But throughout the last half of the nineteenth century
Indian natives in the Government service were em-
ployed in the survey of Tibet, men of the type of the
Babu whom Mr. Kipling has described in Kim. The
whole business was kept strictly secret. The agents
were known only by the letters of the alphabet, and
when they crossed the Tibetan borders they were aware
that they had passed beyond the protection of the
British Raj. More than one reached Lhasa by fan-
tastic routes, with the result that the Indian Govern-
ment had accurate information about the city filed
in its archives, while the world at large knew the place
only from the story of Hue and Gabet, and from
the drawing of the Potala made by Grueber in the
seventeenth century.
Of the later European travellers none reached the
capital. Mr. Littledale in 1895 was not stopped by
the Tibetan authorities till he was within fifty miles
of the city, and Sven Hedin in 1901 got within four-
teen days of Lhasa from the north. But meantime
events were happening which were to impel the Govern-
LHASA 21
ment of India to interfere more actively in Tibetan
poKcy than by merely sending native agents to collect
news. The traditional policy was to preserve Tibet
as a sanctuary, but a sanctuary is only a sanctuary if
all the neighbours combine to hold it inviolate.
In 1903 the position of Britain and Tibet was like
that of a big boy at school who is tormented by an
impertinent youngster. He bears it for some time,
but at last is compelled to administer chastisement.
The Convention of 1890 and the Trade Regulations
of 1893 were outraged by the Tibetans in many of their
provisions ; our letters of protest were returned un-
opened ; and, since news travels fast upon the frontier,
our protected peoples began to wonder what made
the British Raj so tolerant of ill-treatment. This was
bad enough for our prestige in the East, but the danger
became acute when we discovered that the Dalai Lama
was in treaty with Russia, and that an avowed Rus-
sian agent, one Dorjieff, was in residence at his court.
The two powers in Lhasa were the Dalai Lama, who
speedily fell under Russian influence, and the Tsong-du,
or Council, composed of representatives of the great
priestly caste, who suspected all innovations, and were
in favour of maintaining the traditional policy of
exclusion against Russia and Britain alike. China,
22 THE' LAST SECRETS
though the nominal suzerain, was impotent, her Viceroy,
the Amban, being partially insulted by both parties.
In these circumstances Britain could only make her
arrangements by going direct to headquarters. Dor-
jieff had played his cards with great skill, and seemed
to be winning everywhere. The Dalai Lama was
wholly with him, and had received from the Tsar a
complete set of vestments of a Bishop of the Greek
Church, The Russian monarch was recognized as
a Bodisat incarnation, representing no less a person
than Tsong-kapa, the Luther of Lamaism ; and Russia
was popularly believed to be a Buddhist Power, or, at
any rate, the sworn protector of the Buddhist faith.
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of these
doings ; but at the same time Russian influence was
rather potential than actual. The Cossacks who ac-
companied Sven Hedin were headed off from the Holy
City as vigorously as any Enghsh explorer, and the
tales of arming with Russian rifles which filtered through
to India were rather inteUigent anticipations than
records of facts.
There were thus two parties in Tibet pulling against
each other, but both in different ways hostile to our
interests. The Dalai Lama and Dorjieff favoured a
departure from the traditional Tibetan policy in favour
LHASA 23
of Russia. The Tsong-du and the Lamaist hierarchy
in general were all for exclusion, but in their wilfulness
declined to observe treaties or behave with neigh-
bourly honesty. This internal strife, which alone made
possible the success of our expedition, also made its
dispatch inevitable, for neither party was prepared
to listen to any argument but force. Few enterprises
have ever been undertaken by Britain more unwill-
ingly, and her decision was only arrived at under the
compulsion of stark necessity. There were many who
reprobated what they assumed to be a violation of
the sacred places of an ancient, pure, and pacific rel-
igion. But there was no need for compunction on
that score, since Lamaism was the grossest perversion
of Buddhism in all Asia. Spiritually it had more
kinship with the aboriginal devil-worship of Tibet
than the gentle creed of Gautama. Practically it was
a political tyranny of monks, who battened upon a
mild and industrious population and ruled them
with coarse theological terrors. Our reception by
the monasteries was sufficiently gruff ; but to the
common people we came rather in the guise of
friends.
In July, 1903, Colonel Younghusband, as he then was,
Mr. White, and Captain O'Connor went to Khamba
24 THE LAST SECRETS
Jong, a place in Southern Tibet, just north of SiJkkim.
There they met the Abbot of Tashilhunpo and certain
emissaries from Lhasa, but nothing could be done ;
and, with the concurrence of the Indian Office, it was
arranged that a Mission should go to Gyangtse, the
chief town of Southern Tibet, accompanied by a small
escorting force. While troops were being collected,
the Commissioner, Colonel Younghusband, went to
Tuna, on the bleak plain above the Tang La, where
he waited through three weary winter months. Mean-
while General Macdonald, a soldier who had had a
distinguished record in Central Africa, took up his
quarters at Chumbi, while Major Bretherton, the chief
transport and supply officer, accumulated stores in
that valley and prepared the line of communications.
Those were anxious months of waiting for the Mission,
for the Tibetans were in force in the neighbourhood,
and daily threatened to attack the small post ; but
nothing happened till the escort joined them in the
end of March, 1904, and all things were ready for the
advance.
It is worth while looking back upon the road to
Tuna from the plains of Bengal, surely one of the most
wonderful of the Great North Roads of the world.
At Siliguri the Httle toy railway to Darjeeling runs up
^.'28,150^^^ Phanjon^ ^r 24,000
i IV Lagyapa/^I;"aK^hulnbi 9,^^80
The Expedition to Lhassu
.183+ n't atHy.
LHASA 26
the hill-side ; but the path for the troops lay along the
gorge of the Teesta River, through forests of sal and
gurjun, which give place in turn to teak and bamboo,
till the altitude increases and the tree-fern and rhodo-
dendron take their places, and at last the pines are
reached and the fringe of the snows is near. From
the glorious sub-tropical vegetation of Gangtok, the
capital of Sikkim, the road runs through difficult
ravines till it passes the tree-line at Lagyap and climbs
over the frozen summit of the Natu La. From this
point Tibet is visible, with the majestic snows of
Chumulhari hanging like a cloud in the north. Then
you descend to the Chumbi valley, the Debatable
Land of Tibet, where stands Ta-Karpo, the great
White Rock which recalls a famous passage in the
Odyssey, Right under Chumulhari and just south of
the Tang La, lies Phari Jong, the first of the minor
Tibetan fortalices, which looks as if it were a bad copy
of some European model. A little farther and you
are over the pass and on the great plateau of Tuna,
where icy winds blow from the hills and drive the
gritty soil in blizzards about the traveller. There
are few places in the world where in so short a time
so complete a climatic and scenic change can be
experienced.
26 THE LAST SECRETS
II
On the 3l8t March the expedition left Tuna ; and
after an unfortunate encounter with the Tibetans,
which cost the latter many lives, and in which Mr,
Edmund Candler, the distinguished war correspond-
ent, was wounded, the enemy made a further stand
at Red Idol Gorge. Nothing of importance, how-
ever, occurred till the town of Gyangtse was reached
and occupied without a shot. Very soon it became
apparent that no more could be done here than at
Khamba Jong, and the Government of India were
obKged to sanction a farther advance to Lhasa. For
this preparations must be made ; so the Commis-
sioner, with a small escort, took up his quarters
at Gyangtse, while General Macdonald returned to
Chumbi for reinforcements. The jong was found to
be deserted, but, unfortunately, was neither held nor
destroyed, the Mission residing in the plain below.
At first the waiting among those iris-clad meadows
was pleasant and idyllic enough ; the country people
brought abundant supplies, and members of the staff
rode through the neighbourhood and had tea with
various dignitaries of the Church ; but early in May
things took a turn for the worse. It was reported
LHASA 27
that the Tibetans were fortifying the Karo La, the next
pass on the Lhasa road ; and, since it is the first prin-
ciple of frontier warfare to strike quickly, Colonel
Brander was dispatched with the larger part of the
garrison to disperse them. He performed the task
with conspicuous success, and the incident is remark-
able for one of the strangest pieces of fighting in our
military history. It was necessary to enfilade a sangar
in which the enemy was ensconced, and a native
ofiicer, Wassawa Singh, with twelve Gurkhas, was
detached for the work. They climbed by means of
cracks and chimneys up a 1,500 feet cliff — an exploit
which would have done credit to any Alpine club,
even if the climbers had not been cumbered with
weapons, exposed to fire, and labouring at a height
of nearly 19,000 feet.
During the engagement disquieting news arrived
from Gyangtse that the jong had been reoccupied
by the enemy and that the Mission was undergoing
a continuous bombardment. Colonel Brander hurried
back, to find that the world had moved fast in his
absence, and that there was a new type of Tibetan
army to be faced — a tjrpe possessed of both dash and
persistence, with some notion of strategy, and with
guns which, at short range, could do real execution.
28 THE LAST SECRETS
So began the blockade of the Mission house ; an imper-
fect blockade, for the telegraph wires remained intact,
the mail was delivered with fair regularity, and the
besieged endured no special privations. " The hon-
ours," says Mr. Perceval Landon,* "were pretty
evenly divided. Neither the Tibetans nor we were
able to storm the other's defences ; a mutual fusillade
compelled each side to protect its occupants by an
elaborate system of traverses ; and straying beyond
the narrow tracts of the fortifications was, on either
side, severely discouraged by the other."
An attempt to cut our communications failed, and
by the capture of Pala the garrison greatly strengthened
its position. Our troops had an experience of the
type of fighting which has scarcely been known since
the great sackings of the Thirty Years' War. In an
upland country we expect attacks on fortified hill-
tops, and long-range encounters, such as we saw in
South Africa. But in an episode like the capture of
Naini, it was mediaeval street fighting that we had
to face. The Castle of Otranto provided no more
endless labyrinths than those Tibetan monasteries.
" Bands of desperate swordsmen were found in knots
under trap-doors and behind sharp turnings. They
* Lhasa, by Perceval Landon.
LHASA 29
would not surrender, and had to be killed by rifle shots
fired at a distance of a few feet."
On the 26th June General Macdonald arrived with
a relieving force, and soon after came the Tongsa Pen-
lop, the temporal ruler of Bhutan, a genial potentate
in rich vari-coloured robes and a Homburg hat. The
Tibetan offensive had weakened, but the jong had to
be taken before the Mission could advance. Down the
middle of the precipitous south-eastern face of the
great rock ran a deep fissure, across which walls had
been built. It was decided to breach these walls by our
gun fire and then to attack by way of the cleft. The
actual assault was a brilliant and intrepid exploit, for
which Lieutenant Grant of the 8th Gurkhas most
deservedly received the Victoria Cross. With our guns
battering the walls above, he and his men scrambled
up the ravine, while masses of rubble poured down on
them, and every now and then carried off a man.
Then the Gurkhas' bugles warned the guns to cease,
and the last climb began up a face so steep that there
was no possible shelter from the enemy ■=« fire. By
such desperate mountaineering the invaders at last
reached the wreckage of the Tibetan wall. Grant
and one of the Gurkhas were the first two men over,
and to the observers below their death seemed a
30 THE LAST SECRETS
certainty. They were two against the whole enemy
force in the jong, and had the Tibetans reserved their
fire and waited at the bastions, they could have picked
off every man of the assault as his head appeared above
the breach. But the bold course proved the wise one,
and presently the garrison surrendered. Rarely has
the Victoria Cross been better earned, and it is satis-
factory to know that Lieutenant Grant reaped the
reward of perfect fearlessness and received only a
slight wound.
Ill
On the 14th July the expedition moved out from
Gyangtse along the road to Lhasa. Grass and a glory
of flowers covered the glens which led up to the Karo
La, The serious fighting was over, and the second
crossing of that pass was remarkable only for the fact
that some rock platforms and caves had to be cleared
by our panting troops at an altitude of over 19,000
feet. In the rest of the story the soldier finds little
place, and the interest attaches itself to the durbars
of the Commissioner and the treasure-house of natural
and artistic wonders which the Mission was approaching.
For after Gyangtse the resistance of the Tibetans was
LHASA 31
at an end. Half -sullenly and half -curiously they per-
mitted our advance, delaying us a little with fruitless
negotiations, while in Lhasa the game of high politics
which the Dalai Lama had played was turning against
him, and, like another deity, he was meditating a
pilgrimage.
After the Karo La came the Yam-dok — or, as some
call it, the Yu-tso or Turquoise Lake — the most wonder-
ful natural feature of the plateau. Its curious shape, its
pale blue waters, its shores of white sand fringed with
dog-roses and forget-me-nots, the cloud of fable which
has always brooded over it, and its august environ-
ment, make it unique among the lakes of the world.
I quote a fragment of Mr. Landon's description : —
" Below lie both the outer and the inner lakes, this follow-
ing with counter-indentations the in-and-out windings of the
other's shore-line. The mass and colour of the purple dis-
tance is Scotland at her best — Scotland, too, in the slow drift
of a slant-roofed raincloud in among the hills. At one's feet
the water is like that of the Lake of Geneva. But the tattered
outline of the beach, with its projecting lines of needle-rocks,
its wide, white curving sandspits, its jagged islets, its precipi-
tous spurs, and, above all, the mysterious tarns strung one
beyond another into the heart of the hills, all these are the
Yam-dok's own, and not another's. If you are lucky, you
may see the snowy slopes of To-nang gartered by the waters,
and always on the horizon are the everlasting ice-fields of the
Himalayas, bitterly ringing with argent the sun and colour
32 THE LAST SECRETS
of the still blue lake. You will not ask for the added glories
of a Tibetan sunset ; the grey spin and scatter of a rain-threaded
afterglow, or the tangled sweep of a thundercloud's edge
against the blue, will give you all you wish, and you will have
seen the finest view in all this strange land."
On the shore lies the convent of Samding, the home
of the Dorje Phagmo, or pig goddess, which was jeal-
ously respected by the troops, since its abbess had
nursed Chundra Dass, one of the adventurous agents
of the Indian Government, when he fell sick during
his travels. The present incarnation, a Httle girl of
six, declined to reveal herself. Nothing was more
satisfactory in the whole tale of the expedition than
the way in which any service done at any time to a
British subject, white or black, met with full recog-
nition. Such conduct cannot have failed to have
raised the prestige of the Power which showed itself
so mindful of its servants. Prestige and reputation
of a kind, indeed, we already possessed. Tibetan
monasteries had a trick of sending their most valuable
belongings to the nearest convent, for, they argued,
the English do not enter nunneries or war with women.
On July 24th the expedition crossed the Khamba La
and descended to the broad green valley of the Tsang-
po. The crossing of that river, a work of real difficulty,
LHASA 33
was made tragic by the death of Major Bretherton,
the briUiant transport officer, to whom, perhaps, more
than to any other soldier, the military success in the
enterprise was due. Not the least of the mysteries
of Tibet was this secret stream, which the traveller,
after miles of bleak upland, finds flowing among Eng-
lish woods and meadows. In Assam and Bengal it
was the Brahmaputra ; but when it entered the hills
it was as unknown to civiUzed man as Alph or the
Four Rivers of Eden. What its middle course was
like and how it broke through the mountain barrier
were questions which no one had answered,* nor at
the time was there any accurate knowledge of its upper
valleys.
Once on the north bank Lhasa was but a short way
ofE, and in growing excitement the expedition covered
the last stages. It was one of the great moments of
life, and we can all understand and envy the final
hurried miles, tiU through the haze the eye caught the
gleam of golden roofs and white terraces. The first
prospect brought no disappointment. If the streets
were squaHd, they were set in a green plain seamed
with waters ; trees and gardens were everywhere ;
while, above, the huge Assisi-hke citadel of the Potala
• See Chapter II.
(2,808) S
34 THE LAST SECRETS
typified the massive secrecy of generations, and the
ring of dark hills reminded the onlooker that this
garden ground was planted on the roof of the world.
Meanwhile the expedition set itself down outside
the gates to abide the pleasure of the sullen and per-
turbed masters. The deity of the place had gone on
a journey, no one quite knew whither. He had kept
his moonUght flitting a secret, and had gone off on
the northern road with Dorjieff and a small escort
to claim the hospitality of his spiritual brother of
Urga. He had played his impossible game with spirit
and subtlety, and he had a pretty taste for romance
in its ending. " When one looks for mystery in Lhasa,"
wrote Mr. Candler, " one's thoughts dwell solely on
the Dalai Lama and the Potala. I cannot help dwell-
ing on the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It
plunges us into medisevalism. To my mind there is
no picture so engrossing in modern history as that
exodus when the spiritual head of the Buddhist Church,
the temporal ruler of six millions, stole out of his
palace by night, and was borne away in his palanquin."
The romance which Mr. Candler saw in the Potala,
Mr. Landon found most conspicuously in the church
of the Jo-kang. The palace was magnificent from
the outside, but within it was only a warren of small
LHASA 86
rooms and broken stairways. The great cathedral,
on the other hand, was hidden away among trees and
streets, so that its golden roof could only be seen from
a distance, but inside it was a shrine of all that was
mysterious and splendid. The contrast was allegori-
cal of the difference between the temporal ruler of
Lamaism — gaudy, tyrannical, and hollow — and the
sway of the Buddhist Church, which by hidden ways
and unseen agencies dominated the imagination of
Asia. The Chinese Amban, having a natural desire
to pay back the people who had so grossly neglected
him, invited certain members of the Mission to enter
this Holy of Holies. The visitors were the first white
men to approach the inner sanctuary of the Buddhist
faith. They were stoned on leaving the building, but
the sight was one worth risking much to see. In the
central shrine sat the great golden Buddha, roped
with jewels, crowned with turquoise and pearl, sur-
rounded by dim rough-hewn shapes which loomed
out fitfully in the glare of the butter-lamps, while tke
maroon-clad monks droned their eternal chant before
the silver altar. And the statue was as strange as
its environment.
" For this is no ordinary presentation of the Master. The
features are smooth and almost childish ; beautiful they are
36 THE LAST SECRETS
not, but there is no need of beauty here. There is no trace
of that inscrutable smile which, from Mukden to Ceylon, is
inseparable from our conception of the features of the Great
Teacher. Here there is nothing of the saddened smile of the
Melancholia, who has known too much and has renounced
it all as vanity. Here, instead, is the quiet happiness and
the quick capacity for pleasure of the boy who had never yet
known either pain, or disease, or death. It is Gautama as a
pure and eager prince, without any thought for the morrow
or care for to-day."
Mr. Landon has other pictures of almost equal
charm. He takes us to the famous Ling-kor, the
sacred road which encircled the town, worn with the
feet of generations of men seeking salvation. We
see the unclean abode of the Ragyabas, that strange
unholy caste of beggar scavengers ; we walk in the
gardens of the Lu-kang, by the willow-fringed lake
and the glades of velvet turf ; and, not least, we visit
the temple of the Chief Wizard, where every form
of human torment is delicately portrayed in fresco
and carving. But if we wish to realize the savagery
at the heart of this proud theocracy, we must go with
Mr. Candler to the neighbouring Depung monastery
on the quest for supplies, and see the tribe of inquisitors
buzzing out like angry wasps, and submitting only
when the guns were trained on them. For these weeks
of waiting in Lhasa were an anxious time for all con-
LHASA 37
cerned. Our own position was precarious in the
extreme, and, had the Lhasans once realized it, impos-
sible. Winter was approaching, the Government was
urging the Mission to get its Treaty and come home,
and yet day after day had to pass without result, and
the Commissioner could only wait, and oppose to the
obstinacy of the monks a stronger and quieter deter-
mination. Sir Francis Younghusband was indeed
almost the only man in the Empire fitted for the task.
" He sat through every durbar," says Mr. Candler,
" a monument of patience and inflexibility, impassive
as one of their own Buddhas. Priests and councillors
found that appeals to his mercy were hopeless. He,
too, had orders from his King to go to Lhasa; if he
faltered, his Ufe also was at stake ; decapitation would
await him on his return. That was the impression he
purposely gave them. It curtailed palaver. How
in the name of all their Buddhas were they to stop
such a man 1 "
At last on 1st September, when after a month's
diplomacy the Tibetans had only admitted two of our
demands, the time came to deliver our ultimatum.
The delegates were told that if all our terms were not
accepted within a week. General Macdonald would
consider the question of using stronger arguments.
38 THE LAST SECRETS
Our forbearance was justified by its results, for the
opposition suddenly subsided, and we gained what we
asked without any coercion. It was a diplomatic
triumph of a high order, obtained in the face of diffi-
culties which seemed to put diplomacy out of the
question. The final scene came on 7th September,
when in the audience chamber of the Potala the Treaty
was signed by the Commissioner, and by the acting
Regent, who affixed the seal of the Dalai Lama, the
four Shapes, a representative of the Tsong-du, and the
heads of the great monasteries. Thereafter came a
limelight photograph of the gathering, and with this
very modern climax the great Asian mystery became
a thing of the past. The Dalai Lama had already
been formally deposed, his spiritual powers were trans-
ferred to our friend the Tashe Lama, and, with the
Treaty in our baggage and a real prestige in our wake,
we began the homeward march.
IV
What were the results of the expedition ? Greo-
graphically they appeared a little barren, for we stuck
too close to the highroad to solve many of the greater
mysteries. One fact of cardinal importance was
LHASA 39
established : our conception of Tibet was revolu-
tionized, and instead of an arid plateau we learned
that about one-third of it was nearly as fertile and
well-watered as Kashmir. For the rest, the two most
interesting expeditions were forbidden — down the
Brahmaputra to Assam, and to the mountains, nine
days north of Lhasa, which had formed the southern
limit of Sven Hedin's exploration. One valuable
expedition was, however, undertaken. Western
Tibet had hitherto been the best known part of the
tableland, and now our knowledge of it was linked
on to the Lhasan district. On 10th October Captains
Ryder, Rawling, and Wood, and Lieutenant Bailey,*
with six Gurkhas, left Gyangtse, and made their way
by Shigatse up the Tsangpo. They explored the
river to its sourco, and, passing the great Manasarowar
lakes, arrived at Gartok, on the Upper Indus. Thence
they entered the Sutlej valley, and, crossing the Shipki
Pass of over 18,000 feet, reached Simla in the first
week of January 1905. Much was added also to our
knowledge of the Himalaya. The fact was established
that the old report of northern rivals to Everest was
unfounded ; and, moreover, the highest mountain
in the world was seen from the northern side, where
* See Chapter II.
40 THE LAST SECRETS
the slopes are easier, and the possibility of an attempt
on it occurred to various minds — a hope which seven-
teen years later was realized,*
On the political side the true achievement was not
the formal Treaty, but the going to Lhasa. We taught
the Tibetans that their mysterious capital could not
be shut against our troops, and that Russian promises
were less real than British performances. We showed
ourselves strong, and, above all things, humane, and
we earned respect, and, it would also appear, a kind
of affection. When the venerable Regent solemnly
blessed the Commissioner and General Macdonald for
their clemency, and presented each with a golden
image of Buddha — an honour rarely granted to the
faithful, and never before to an unbehever — he gave
expression to the general feeling of the people.
Tibet was enveloped once more in its old seclusion
— a deeper seclusion, indeed, since we guaranteed it.
A final result was that we vindicated our claim to
protect our subjects and those who served us. We took
our Gurkhas into the forbidden land, which their native
traditions had invested with a miraculous power, and
showed them the truth. As for Bhutan, up to 1904
it was as obscure as Tibet and its people were strangers.
* See Chapter IX.
LHASA 41
They were now, in the Commissioner's phrase, " our
enthusiastic allies." Their ruler in his Homburg hat
joined us in the march, and acted as master of cere-
monies in introducing us to the Lhasa notables.
Nearly twenty years have passed, and much water
has since run under the bridges. In 1906 China ad-
hered to the Treaty, and in 1907 came the Anglo-
Russian Convention which provided for the secluding
of the country by both Powers, and recognized China's
suzerain rights. In 1909 the Dalai Lama, who had
been restored, was ejected by Chinese troops, and in
1910 he was at Darjeeling, a refugee claiming our
hospitality. Once again he was reinstated, and he
has ever since been a faithful ally of Britain. At the
outbreak of the Great War he offered 1,000 Tibetan
troops, and informed the King that lamas through
the length and breadth of Tibet were praying for the
success of the British arms and for the happiness of
the souls of the fallen.
Since 1904 both China and Russia have crumbled
into anarchy. There is no peril to India through the
eastern Himalayan passes, and the strategic impor-
tance of Tibet has dwindled. It is still a forbidden
country, but it is no longer a secret one. Posts run
regularly to Lhasa, and a telegraph line has been laid
42 THE LAST SECRETS
to that mysterious capital. But it is mysterious only
by a literary convention. The true mystery is gone ;
the secret, such as it was, has been revealed, and the
human mind can no longer play with the unknown.
Childe Roland had reached the dark tower and found
it not so marvellous after all. It is hard not to sym-
pathize with Mr. Candler's plaint : " There are no
more forbidden cities which men have not mapped
and photographed. Our children will laugh at modern
travellers' tales. They will have to turn again to
GulKver and Haroun al Raschid. And they will soon
tire of these. For now that there are no real mysteries,
no unknown land of dreams, where there may still
be genii and mahatmas and bottle-imps, that kind
of literature will be tolerated no longer. Children
will be sceptical and matter-of-fact and disillusioned,
and there will be no sale for fairy stories any more.
But we ourselves are children. Why could we not
have left at least one city out of bounds ? "
These reflections do not detract from the romance
of the expedition itself and the privilege of the for-
tunate men who shared in it. For them it was
assuredly a great adventure — one which could never
be repeated. It may be summed up, as Mr. Landon
has summed it up, in certain famous lines from the
LHASA 48
Odyssey which have not only a curious local appli-
cation, but embody the true spirit of the adventure : —
" Over the tides of Ocean on they pressed,
On past the great White Kock beside the stream,
On, till, through God's high bastions east and west,
They reached the plains with pale-starred iris dressed,
And found at last the folk of whom men dream."
n
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA
{Map, p. 48.)
Fifty years ago one of the questions most debated
among geographers was the origin of the Brahma-
putra. The great river, navigable for 800 miles from
its mouth, was famiUar enough in its course through
the plains of India ; but it flowed from the wild Abor
country, and no part of the Indian borders was less
known than those north-eastern foothills. Meantime
in Tibet, north of the main chain of the Himalayas,
there was a large river, the Tsangpo, flowing from
west to east. Did the Tsangpo ultimately become
the Brahmaputra, or did it flow into the Irrawadi, or
even into the Yang-tse Kjang ? All three views were
held, but there was no evidence to decide between them.
In 1874 a native explorer, the pundit Nain Singh,
started on his famous journey from Leh to Lhasa, and
was instructed, if possible, to follow the Tsangpo and
see where it went. He reached Lhasa, and on his
return struck the Tsangpo at Tsetang, well to the east
in
48 THE LAST SECRETS
of the point where the British expedition crossed in
1904, He followed its course for thirty miles farther
down, but was prevented from continuing his journey
and compelled to return by the direct route to India.
In 1878 another native explorer, G.M.N. , seems to have
followed the Tsangpo down as far as Gyala, which is
not far from the point where the river turns sharply
to the south, but his reports were not considered
rehable. In 1884 another native, Kinthup, succeeded
in following the Tsangpo to a point called Pemako-
chung. There he found an enormous gorge, and was
compelled to make a detour out to the north and east,
rejoining the stream where it entered the Abor country.
Kinthup's report was of the highest interest. He had
stood at the beginning of an apparently impassable
gorge, and he reported a faU at Pemakochung of 150
feet. He was, however, quite illiterate and was only
able to make his report from memory, and it presently
appeared that the height might be only 50 feet, and
that the higher faU was not in the main stream but in
a small tributary. One fact, however, of the utmost
importance had been estabHshed by his expedition.
The Tsangpo was beyond reasonable doubt the Brah-
maputra in its upper course.
The Lhasa expedition in 1904 would fain have traced
k\ v^
X
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA 49
the river to the plains had not the Government inter-
posed a veto. In the years that followed, the source
of the Tsangpo was discovered by Captain Rawling.
In 1911 the Abor expedition increased our knowledge
of the course of the Brahmaputra right up to the skirts
of the main range. The problem now was not the
linking up of the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra, but
what happened to the river in the hairpin bend be-
tween Pemakochung and its debouchment in the
Abor valleys. The elevation of the stream at the
point where the main road to Lhasa crossed it
was in the neighbourhood of 12,000 feet. From
there as far as Pemakochung we knew that there was
no very great loss in altitude, but when the Brahma-
putra appeared in the Abor foothills it was only
between 1,000 and 2,000 feet above the sea. The
stretch of unknown course was perhaps 200 miles,
and in that section the river broke through the main
range of the Himalaya, It was possible — nay, it was
probable — that somewhere in those gorges, which
Kinthup had thought impassable, lay hidden the most
tremendous waterfall in the world.
The secret of the Brahmaputra gorges was one of
the topics that most fascinated geographers between
the years 1904 and 1913. In that latter year the
(2,860) 4
60 THE LAST SECRETS
mystery was solved, and the ignotum proved not to
be the magnificum. This is the story of the solution.
The course of the Brahmaputra through Assam is
roughly from north-east to south-west, but at a place
called Sadiya the main stream, there known as the
Dihang, turns sharply to the north. At that point,
too, it receives an important tributary on its left bank
called the Dibang. During the winter of 1912-13
Captain F. M. Bailey, an officer of the Indian Pohtical
Service, was employed by the Government to survey
the Dibang basin, while another party had gone through
the Abor country to survey the Dihang. Early in
1913 Captain Bailey and Captain Morshead of the
Royal Engineers collected what stores they could
and started off from the village of Mipi on the upper
waters of the Dibang. Their aim was to cross into
the Dihang valley, and to follow the river upstream
to the Tibetan plateau. Captain Bailey had been
with the Lhasa expedition, and had had a long record
of exploration in different parts of Tibet, so he had all
the qualifications needed by the pioneer. But his
party was imperfectly equipped, since it started more
or less on the spur of the moment, and had no time
to obtain proper stores from India. He trusted to
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA 61
the prestige won by the Abor expedition, and his ex-
perience of the ways of the Tibetans, to furnish him
with coohes and local suppUes.
The reader's attention is now prayed for the map.
The first business was to cross the high passes separat-
ing the Dibang from the Dihang. The weather proved
abominable, and for part of the route only half rations
could be issued. As they descended into the valley
of the Dihang they found once more cultivation and
villages, and they were able to supplement their stores
by shooting game, especially pheasants, which teemed
by the roadside. It was necessary to estabUsh touch
with the Abor Survey party lower down the river,
and accordingly they had to halt for some days. At
a place called Kapu they managed to take the altitude
in the river bed, and found the height above sea level
to be 2,610 feet — an important result, for they were
able to take no other observation at water level below
the main gorges.
These foothills of the Himalaya were inhabited
chiefly by savage tribes akin to the Abors, who were
known generically as Lopas. But as the expedition
advanced up the river they came to the country of
the Pobas, who were under Tibetan influence. At
Lagung, which is about the centre of the hairpin bend,
62 THE LAST SECRETS
the course of the river turned west. It might have
been possible for them to have followed it some thirty
miles farther, but they were pressed by a Poba official,
with whom they made friends, to go north-east into
the absolutely unknown country of Po-me, which
would enable them to make a circuit and reach Gyala
at the head of the gorges. Captain Bailey considered
that it would be easier to explore the gorges by going
downstream.
On 21st June they crossed a pass of over 13,000
feet into the valley of the river known as the Po-
Tsangpo, an affluent of the Brahmaputra. It was a
stream 80 yards wide, and of such rapidity that its
current was one whirl of foam. The natives were in
great fear of the Chinese, and it was necessary to go
boldly to Showa, the capital, where a letter could be
received from the Abor Survey party vouching for
their respectability. The Chinese had burned the
place, killed the chief, and decapitated the council,
and the inhabitants looked askance at the travellers
because of the Chinese writing on a tablet of Indian
ink which they carried. After three days, however,
a letter arrived from the Abor party, which persuaded
them that Captain Bailey and Captain Morshead were
at any rate servants of the English King.
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA 63
The explorers now moved north-eastwards down the
Po-Tsangpo, finding great difiiculty in crossing the tribu-
taries, where the bridges had mostly been destroyed.
It was a beautiful land, bright with primula, iris, and
blue poppy, and the roads were lined with raspberries.
They were now leaving the Po-me country and travel-
Hng among a more civilized type of Tibetan, who wore
hats like clergymen, made out of yak's hair. After
crossing a pass of over 15,000 feet they returned to
the main stream of the Tsangpo. This country was
under the charge of Tzongpen of Tsela, who came to
meet the travellers — an urbane gentleman whose son
was at Rugby and a promising cricketer.
They were now on the Tsangpo above the mysterious
gorges. They had left behind them the hot valleys
of the lower stream and found a dry Tibetan dale,
where the chief crops were barley and buckwheat.
The river was broad and slow, at one point stretching
into a lake 600 yards wide, and its altitude was 9,680
feet. The problem was now to follow it down from
that point to the point of their last observation, where
the altitude was only 2,610 feet. Somewhere in the
intervening tract of gorge it must make the enormous
descent of over 7,000 feet.
The first stage was the twenty-two miles down to
64 THE LAST SECRETS
Gyala, which had been visited in 1878. The stream was
in flood owing to melting snows, and the water-side
track was difficult. Four days' march below Gyala
they reached Pemakochung, the limit of Kinthup's
exploration. So far they had passed various small
rapids, but nothing in the nature of a fall. A mile
below Pemakochung they came on Kinthup's cascade.
It proved to be only some 30 feet high and not vertical.
The road now became extraordinarily intricate.
Great spurs ran down to the river and blocked the
glen, and it was necessary to cut paths through dense
forest and thickets of rhododendron to surmount
them. There was no track of any kind, and the trib-
utaries descending from the adjacent glaciers were
often hard to cross. They ran short of food, and could
get no reliable information as to the possibiUty of
their descending the stream. Captain Morshead and
the coohes accordingly returned to Gyala, and Cap-
tain Bailey, with one man and fifteen pounds of flour,
attempted to descend the Tsangpo by the route which
a party of Monbas was said to have recently taken.
He found the Monbas, but they were wild and suspi-
cious and far from helpful. They refused to take him
to their village, and declined to show him the road
round the difficult cliffs. Apparently they considered
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA 55
that a traveller who had only one servant, and who
carried most of his baggage himself, must be a person
of small importance and not worth troubling about.
He managed, however, to pick up from them certain
news about the lower valley.
He returned to Gyala and rejoined Captain Mors-
head, and they proceeded to piece their knowledge to-
gether. At Gyala a small stream drops from the cliffs,
making a waterfall, in which the god Shingche Chogye
is concealed. The image of the deity is carved
or painted in the rock behind the fall, but it is only
possible to see it in winter when there is Httle water.
This, apparently, was Kinthup's fall of 150 feet. Now,
why should so meagre a natural feature have attained
such celebrity among the Tibetans, for the fame of it
had spread far and wide over the country ? The
reason seems to be that it is unique, because there
are no other high falls. Had this deduction been made
from Kinthup's evidence, the mystery of the Brahma-
putra gorges would have been solved long ago.
The travellers collected their observations on the
altitude of the river level and the speed of the current.
At Pe, where they had first struck the Tsangpo, the
height was 9,680 feet ; thirty-four miles below it the
river level was 8,730 feet, giving a drop of 28 feet a
66 THE LAST SECRETS
mile. At Pemakochung the altitude was 8,380 feet,
and the drop 24 feet a mile. Three miles farther down
the altitude was 8,090, giving a drop of 97 feet a mile,
which included the 30-feet drop of Kinthup's fall. At
the lowest point Captain Bailey reached in the river
bed the altitude was 7,480 feet, giving a drop of 48
feet a mile. The next point on the river which they
had visited was Lagung, below the gorges, where they
could not take an observation in the river bed ; but
forty-five miles downstream the altitude was 2,610 feet.
There remained, therefore, some fifty miles of gorge
which had not been, and could not be, explored, and
the information about it was only indirect. From
Lagung upstream to where the Po-Tsangpo joined
the Tsangpo, lay a stretch which many natives had
visited. The altitude of the junction was estimated
at 6,700 feet, which would give a drop of 3,090 feet
in the seventy-five miles down to their observation
of 2,610 feet — a fall of some 41 feet per mile. Here
there was clearly no waterfall. From the junction
of the two streams to the point where Captain Bailey
turned back was not more than twenty miles, and the
drop 1,780 feet, giving a fall of 89 feet a mile. The
Monbas whom he met told him that they had hunted
on the right bank of the stream throughout this un-
THE GORGES OF THE BRAHMAPUTRA 57
known stretch, and that, though there were many
rapids, there were no big cascades.
We are not concerned with the rest of the journey
of Captain Bailey and Captain Morshead, which took
them upstream to Tsetang, where Nain Singh had
gone in 1874, and back to India by the wild country
of the Bhutan border. Their evidence may be con-
sidered to have finally solved the riddle of how the
great river breaks through the highest range on the
globe. It does it by means of a hundred miles of
marvellous gorges, where the stream foams in rapids,
but there is no fall more considerable than can be
found in many a Scottish salmon river. I am not
sure that the reaUty is not more impressive than the
romantic expectation. The mighty current is not
tossed in spray over a great cliff, but during the aeons
it has bitten a deep trough through that formidable
rock wall. Curiously enough, the rivers which break
through the Himalaya chose the highest parts of the
range through which to cut. South of Pemakochung
is the great peak of Namcha Barwa, 25,445 feet high ;
north of it is the peak of Gyala Peri, 23,460 feet. The
distance between these mountains is only some four-
teen miles, and through this gap, at an altitude of just
under 9,000 feet, flows the great river.
m
THE NORTH POLE
THE NORTH POLE
{Map, p. 80.)
When sceptical people say that Polar exploration
has been of no benefit to mankind, it is permissible
to think that their judgment is as unsound as their
point of view is limited. Not only have Polar ex-
plorers added enormously to the scientific knowledge
of the world, but they have also materially aided
commerce. But even if these voyages had been
barren of scientific and commercial results, they would
have been infinitely worth making.
For among Polar explorers are many men who must
be universally regarded as heroes. No training was
more rigorous and dangerous, no work has ever called
for more endurance, resource, and courage. A nation
which is without its heroes is in a sad pHght ; a
nation which has them and ignores their example can
only be looked upon with pity. The spirit of high
adventure is one that no country can afford to neglect.
61
62 . THE LAST SECRETS
The history of geographical discovery is, in its
initial stages, almost solely one of conquest. Men,
either for their own or their country's profit — and
sometimes for both — went out in search of unknown
lands because they wanted to trade with them,
Pytheas, who has been described as " one of the most
intrepid explorers the world has ever seen," was the
first man to bring news of the Arctic regions to the
civilized world. He did not pretend to have visited
them, but in or about 330 B.C. he set out from Mar-
seilles and journeyed north. During this voyage,
which must have lasted for several years, he visited
Britain, and then, proceeding to the most northerly
point of the British Isles, he heard of an Arctic land
called Thule, which at one time of the year enjoyed
perpetual day, and at another had to endure perpetual
night.
With a leap over a few hundred years we come to
Ptolemy, whose influence on geography was almost
paramount from the second century to comparatively
modern times. No one is more dangerous than a bad
cartographer, or more valuable than a good one ; but
although Ptolemy made many mistakes, he also did
such splendid work that it is quite easy to forget them.
To him we owe the names of latitude and longitude.
THE NORTH POLE 63
and it has been well said of him that he held the
extraordinary " distinction of being the greatest
authority on astronomy and geography for over
fifteen hundred years." Ptolemy's work may have
required to be corrected and amplified, but, at least,
he gave the world something which was worthy of
correction.
In the eighth and ninth centuries the Norsemen be-
came terrors in Europe. " Harold of the fair hair "
reigned from 860 to 930 a.d., and these seventy years
formed a period of great adventure. During Harold's
reign the Norsemen colonized Iceland, and in 983
Erik the Red founded a colony in Greenland, which
flourished until the Norwegians ceased to take an
interest in it.
Not until the fifteenth century did English seamen
begin to turn their attention to the North. They
were more or less forced to do so. Portugal and
Spain were all-powerful in the East and West, and
so England began earnestly to think of discovering a
way to Cathay and the Spice Islands by a northern
route. But if we were a Uttle slow in beginning to pay
attention to the Arctic regions, we have every
cause to be satisfied with our work after we had
once begun it. The fifteenth century saw considerable
64 THE LAST SECRETS
activity as regards Scandinavia, but it was not until
1605 that a charter was granted to the Company of
Merchant Adventurers, and from that year we can
date our real interest in Arctic discovery.
It is well, perhaps, to bear in mind, while thinking
of Polar exploration, that there is a marked difference
between the two Polar regions. The Arctic is an
ocean surrounded by continental lands ; the Antarctic
is a continental land surrounded by oceans.
In 1553 Sir Hugh Willoughby set out to try and
find a north-east passage to the Indies. On this
voyage — in which Willoughby lost his life — Novaya
Zemlya was discovered, and Richard Chancellor, who
took part in the expedition, reached Archangel ; and
then, travelUng overland to Moscow, was received
graciously by Ivan the Terrible, the Tsar of Russia.
This visit was of importance, because it helped to
estabUsh trade between England and Russia.
Competition to find a route northwards to China
and the Indies had by this time become acute in
Europe, and many bold navigators set out from
England. Among the sailors who were maintaining
her high record on the seas Sir Martin Frobisher
deserves especially to be mentioned. In 1576 he set
out, cheered doubtless by knowing that Queen Eliza-
THE NORTH POLE 66
beth had " good liking of their doings," to find a
north-west passage. On three occasions Frobisher
voyaged northwards, and he reached Greenland and
discovered the strait that was named after him.
"He is not worthy," Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote in
the latter part of the sixteenth century, " to live at
all who, for fear of danger or death, shunneth his
country's service or his own honour, since death is
inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal." Most
assuredly our Elizabethan sailors did not shun their
" country's service," and Ehzabeth herself was the
first to appreciate and encourage their enterprise.
In 1585 yet another distinguished explorer, John
Davis, embarked upon his career, and during his
voyages he made discoveries that " converted the
Arctic regions from a confused myth into a defined
area." He found several passages towards the west,
and thus strengthened the hope of finding a north-
west passage ; and he also reached " the farthest
north," 72* 12' N., some eleven hundred miles from
the geographical North Pole.
As yet no one had turned his thoughts to the North
Pole itself, but it may truly be said that Davis and
men of his calibre were already beginning to prepare
the way for the time when it would be reached. For
(2,809) 5
66 THE LAST SECRETS
his discoveries, like those of many of the earlier ex-
plorers, were both important in themselves and also
acted as a guide and incentive to those who followed.
In the meantime, Davis had obtained the record for
the " farthest north," a record which Great Britain,
with the exception of a very few years, continued
to hold until 1882.
Many EngUsh navigators did great work in main-
taining this record, and among them was Henry
Hudson, who set out in 1607 with the object of finding
a north-west passage to the Indies. Hudson, in this
voyage, reached 80° N., and did most valuable work
in the Spitzbergen quadrant. It is also reported
that two of his men saw a mermaid, which may
at least be taken as evidence that they were more
than ordinarily observant. Both geographically and
commercially, Hudson's voyages were of the first
importance. He not only made many discoveries,
including that of the river which bears his name,
but he also brought back the news that led directly
to the establishment of the Spitzbergen whale fishery,
an industry that was extremely lucrative to Holland.
In 1615 William Bafiin discovered the land that is
called after him ; and then, for some time, EngUsh
discovery in the Arctic regions ceased to be note-
THE NORTH POLE 67
worthy. BaflBn made no less than five voyages to
the North, and, scientifically, his observations were
permanently valuable to subsequent explorers.
Apart from geographical discovery, these Arctic
voyages had so far been a great stimulant to trade.
In Greenland, Davis Strait, and the Spitzbergen seas,
trade had followed discovery, and what had hap-
pened in those parts of the Arctic also took place
in Hudson Bay, after the Hudson's Bay Company
was formed in 1668. In fact, for the time being,
the desire to make geographical discoveries was
almost obhterated by the desire to trade.
It is, however, pleasant to note that during the
eighteenth century some of our Governments took
an intelligent interest in geographical discovery.
They offered a reward of £5,000 for reaching 89° N.,
and £20,000 was offered to any one who could find the
North-West Passage. In the earUer part of the eight-
eenth century the part that the Russians took in
Arctic discovery must not be omitted. In 1728 Peter
the Great sent out an expedition under the command
of Vitus Bering, a Dane, in which Bering Strait
and other discoveries were made ; and although it is
impossible to mention them in detail, the contribu-
tions that the Russians made in revealing the New
68 THE LAST SECRETS
World to the Old were most creditable to them as a
nation.
In 1773 Captain Phipps conducted an expedition,
which now derives its chief interest from the fact
that Horatio Nelson, then a young midshipman, took
part in it. " Great," says Sir Clements Markham,
" as are the commercial advantages obtained from
Arctic discovery, and still greater as are its scientific
results, the most important of all are its uses as a
nursery for our seamen, as a school for our future
Nelsons, and as affording the best opportunities for
distinction to young naval officers in time of peace."
And it is incontestably true that many of our finest
sailors have learnt their trade in the severe school of
geographical exploration.
With the advent of the nineteenth century many
expeditions were sent to the Far North. The desire
actually to reach the North Pole itself did not enter
the thoughts of these courageous navigators, the main
object of their voyages being either to find the North-
West Passage round North America to the Indies,
or the North-East Passage round Asia. Nevertheless,
each one of these voyages added to the store of
knowledge that was being accumulated, each expedi-
tion solved some of the mysteries of the North and
THE NORTH POLE 69
prepared the way for the solution of what came to
be considered the greatest mystery of all.
In 1819 Sir Edward Parry embarked upon the first
of the Arctic voyages which have made his name
famous in the annals of exploration. A sailor by
profession, Parry was happy in possessing the qualities
that fitted him to lead men. During his first expedi-
tion, the prize offered by the English Government to
the first navigator who passed the 110th meridian
was won. Parry and his party spent a winter in
the Arctic — a winter which, thanks to their leader's
careful preparations, was passed without mishap ; and
then, when the winter was over, an expedition to
explore the interior of Melville Island was made.
Thus Arctic travelling was inaugurated by Parry.
Other successful voyages under the same leadership
followed, and when, in 1827, our Admiralty began
favourably to consider the idea of getting as near as
possible to the Pole by way of Spitzbergen, Parry was
naturally chosen to command the expedition. So,
for the fourth time. Parry sailed northwards, and
having reached the north coast of Spitzbergen, he
found a good harbour for his ship, the Hecla, and left
her there. The explorers had taken specially-fitted
boats with them, and these they hoped to be able to
70 THE LAST SECRETS
haul over the ice. The summer, however, had begun
to break up the floes, and m consequence the travellers
had constantly to take the steel runners off the boats
so that the stretches of open water could be crossed.
Moreover, the floes that they did find seemed to
resent such treatment, for most of them were small
and bestrewn with most obstructive hummocks. Not
until they had been pulling and hauling for nearly a
month did they meet with large floes, and by that time
the southerly drift of the ice was in full swing. How-
ever hard Parry and his men pulled, they found that
the drift was as strong as they were — or stronger.
After terrific labour Parry reached 82° 45', a higher
latitude than any reached during the next fifty years.
It was a great attempt by a man whose devotion to
his duty is beyond all praise.
Before we come to the most tragic story in the
history of Arctic exploration, reference must be made
to the discoveries of Captain John Ross, In his
first expedition to the North, Captain Ross was
not successful ; but in his second voyage, when he
was accompanied by his nephew, James C. Ross
(who afterwards gained distinction in the Antarctic),
the magnetic North Pole was discovered, and the
British flag fixed there in 70'^ 5' IT N., and
THE NORTH POLE 71
76° 16' 4" W. Ross's expedition spent four consecu-
tive winters in the Far North, discovered over two
hundred miles of coastline, and returned with a
bountiful crop of scientific knowledge.
We may well admire the love of adventure and the
desire to make geographical and scientific discoveries
which induced these constant expeditions to parts
of the world that cannot possibly be called inviting.
Honour was, and is, due to the men who undertook
them, but to John Frankhn's memory especial honour
is paid, for his name is connected with both heroism
and tragedy.
As a boy, Franklin, in spite of his father's opposi-
tion, determined to be a sailor. At the age of fourteen
he was in the Polyphemus at the battle of Copenhagen,
and subsequently he was present at the battle of
Trafalgar. Peace, then as always, brought unem-
ployment for sailors with it, and at the age of twenty-
nine FrankUn found himself unwanted in the Navy.
When, however, the Admiralty decided, in 1818, to send
expeditions to find the North Pole and the North-
West Passage, FrankHn was chosen to command the
Trent. This ship was totally unsuited for such a task,
and owing to oflficial economy — not to say parsimony —
Franklin had to return without achieving any success.
72 THE LAST SECRETS
In the following year he was again sent out with
orders to explore the northern coast of Arctic America,
and " the trending of that coast from the mouth of
the Coppermine eastwards." Not until 1822 did this
expedition of discovery come to a close, after 5,550
miles had been covered by water and land.
The tale of its adventures, extraordinary as they
were, is only the preface to Franklin's Ufe as an ex-
plorer. So famous indeed was he, that when, in 1844,
he returned from Tasmania, where he had been
Governor for seven years, he was offered the com-
mand of an important Arctic expedition. At this
time he was nearly sixty years old, but he was
anxious to resume his exploratory work, and in
1845 he sailed with the Erebus and the Terror (ships
that had already won their laurels under Sir James
Ross in the Antarctic).
In the hope of finding the North- West Passage,
so much coveted and so long concealed, Franklin was
instructed to try a route by Wellington Channel, if
ice did not block the way. The channel was found to
be clear, and the explorers made their way up it,
until they reached 77° N. Then their advance was
blocked by ice, and they turned south and found
winter quarters off Beechey Island. All, so far, had
THE NORTH POLE 73
gone well, and when the ships were released from the
ice at the end of the winter, hopes of further success
must have run high. But presently a mistake was
made that had fatal results — a mistake due to an
error of the chart-makers.
For some time the ships sailed gaily on, important
discoveries being made from day to day. Then came
the fatal decision. All was open to the south. " If
they had continued on their southerly course, the two
ships would have reached Bering Strait. There was the
navigable passage before them. But, alas ! the chart-
makers had drawn an isthmus (which only existed
in their imagination) connecting Boothia with King
William Land. They altered their course to the west,
and were lost." * Soon the ships were surrounded
by a dense ice-pack, and were dangerously im-
prisoned. In the spring of 1847 travelling parties
were sent out, and one of them, under Graham
Gore's command, discovered a North-West Passage,
and consequently proved the connection between the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. When the parties re-
turned FrankUn was seriously ill, and he died on 11th
June, 1847.
No more beautiful epitaph has ever been written
* Markham's The Lands of Silence (Cambridge University Press).
74 THE LAST SECRETS
than the one in Westminster Abbey, which Tennyson
wrote in honour of John FrankUn, his uncle-in-law : —
" Not here ! The cold North hath thy bones, and thou,
Heroic sailor soul,
Art passing on thy happier voyage now
Towards no earthly pole."
A terrible winter for this gallant band of explorers
followed. For months and months the ice remained
impenetrable, and at last the ships had to be aban-
doned. Even if the Erebus and the Terror could have
been freed from the ice, it was more than doubtful
if they would float, so battered were they by their
long, slow drift. Food was both inadequate in quan-
tity and poisonous in quality. Twenty-two officers
and men died during that winter of horror ; the rest
were so weak from privations that, although they
knew their only chance was to retreat by Back's Fish
River, none of them had the strength successfully to
undertake such a march.
It is useless to dwell over the sufferings of these
heroic men. Captain Crozier and Captain Fitzjames
took every precaution, and made all preparations
that were under the circumstances possible, but the
dice were too heavily loaded against them. With
their two heavy boat-sledges they started on 22nd
THE NORTH POLE 75
April, 1848, to make their desperate effort. Not one
of them survived. The Erebus sank when the ice
released her. The Terror also sank, but not until
she had drifted on to the American coast and been
plundered by Eskimos. It is pitiable to think
that prompt action from England might have saved
some, at least, of these valuable lives. But at first,
although there was considerable anxiety about their
fate, no effort was made to find them. Not until
1848 were expeditions sent out in search of FrankHn's
party, and neither of these was successful in finding
any traces. One of these expeditions was, however,
noteworthy, for Leopold M'CUntock, who subsequently
became so renowned as a sledge-traveller, took part
in it.
By 1850 the whole country had become thoroughly
aroused, and the Government decided to send out
strongly equipped expeditions. The Enterprise and
the Investigator, under Captains Collinson and M'Clure,
were sent out to search by way of Bering Strait ; and
four ships, under Captain Austin, were to seek for
traces of the missing party by way of Lancaster
Sound. Austin's expedition failed to find the missing
men, but it was excellently conducted and organized,
and its sledge-travellers (among whom was M'CUntock)
76 THE LAST SECRETS
covered over 7,000 miles, and discovered more than
1,200 miles of new land. When Captain Austin
returned to England nothing had been heard of the
Enterprise and the Investigator, and after some dis-
cussion and consequent delay, it was resolved again
to send the four ships to the Arctic. Not only
Frankhn's men, but also the Enterprise and the
Investigator had now to be searched for. It was a
case of search-parties looking for search-parties.
In their main object — that of clearing up the
mystery of Franklin and his companions — ^these ex-
peditions were not successful, but in other ways they
more than justified themselves. Both CoUinson in
the Enterprise and M'Clure in the Investigator suc-
ceeded in finding a North-West Passage, and much-
needed help was brought to M'Clure by the expedition
sent out partly for the purpose of aiding him and
ColHnson. Further, the sledge journeys of M'Clin-
tock and Mecham during these expeditions were un-
rivalled in result and a real triumph of organization.
Owing to the outbreak of the Crimean War in
1854, popular interest in the fate of the Franklin
expedition diminished, but Lady Franklin remained
loyal to the object to which so many years of her life
had been dedicated ; and after the Government had
THE NORTH POLE 77
refused to assist her further, she decided to fit out a
private expedition, of which Captain M'Clintock took
command. In June, 1857, the Fox, a steam yacht
of 177 tons, started on her voyage to Greenland,
but on reaching Melville Sound, M'Clintock found it
extraordinarily packed with ice. The httle vessel was
firmly imprisoned, and had to spend the winter in the
drifting pack. During eight months she drifted south-
ward for nearly 1,200 geographical miles, and she
was not liberated from her prison until April, 1858.
After such an experience many leaders would have
made for a port in which to refit, but M'Clintock was
of a different temper. No sooner had the Fox freed
herself from her perilous position than he turned her
head towards the north, and once more took up the
work that he had been sent out to do. And this
determination to concentrate, at all costs, on the
definite object in hand ultimately met with its sad
reward. In June, 1859, it was proved beyond any
doubt that the report of the Eskimos (which had been
received in England in 1854), to the effect that they
had seen the dead bodies of several of Franklin's
men, was true. " All the coastline along which the
retreating crews performed their fearful march must,"
M'Clintock wrote, " be sacred to their names alone."
78 THE LAST SECRETS
Among the many feats that M'Clintock and his
men performed during this last search, were a march
round King William Island, the discovery of the one
navigable North- West Passage, and the discovery of
some 800 miles of new coastUne. As far as geographi-
cal discovery was concerned, the main result of the
many expeditions sent out in search of FrankUn was
that the islands to the north of North America had
been mapped out.
In 1853 an American expedition, under Ehsha
Kane, which was sent out in search of Franklin, to
the north of Smith Sound, was fruitful in geographical
discovery, and outlined what has been called the
American route to the Pole.
Interest in the Smith Sound route began to grow
in England, and was stimulated by another American
expedition, led by Charles Hall, in 1871. But although
the desire to undertake more Arctic research was
strongly felt by many EngUshmen, it cannot be said
that it was encouraged in official circles. In 1872
Mr. Lowe and Mr. Goschen did receive a deputation
of Arctic enthusiasts, but were by no means encourag-
ing in their replies. An expedition, however, under
Commander Albert Markham, set out in 1873, and
succeeded in capturing twenty-eight whales, which
THE NORTH POLE 79
were worth nearly £19,000 ; and the result of this
voyage was to stimulate the idea of further Arctic
enterprise.
In November, 1874, Lord Beaconsfield, who was at
the time Prime Minister, announced that an Arctic
expedition to encourage maritime enterprise and to
explore the regions round the Pole would be sent out.
Sir Clements Markham and other Arctic enthusiasts
in England were delighted with this announcement,
but their deUght was short-lived. These enthusiasts
had for years been advocating that exploratory work
should be undertaken in the region round the Pole,
but they did not consider that a mere rush to the
Pole should be undertaken until, at any rate, work of
more value to mankind had been done. The conduct
of the projected expedition was taken over by the
Admiralty, and great was the consternation of Sir
Clements and his friends when it was announced that
" the main object of the expedition was to attain
the highest latitude and, if possible, to reach the
North Pole."
However displeasing such an object was to these
enthusiasts, they could not but rejoice at the interest
shown in the expedition, and in the fact that Captain
Nares was appointed to command it. At the end of
80 THE LAST SECRETS
May, 1875, the ships sailed from Portsmouth, and on
arriving in the Arctic regions Nares had to bear in
mind his definite instructions. In short, exploratory
work was to give way to an effort to reach, if possible,
the Pole itself. But anxious as he was to carry out
his orders, one terrible scourge stood in his way.
Scurvy, that deadly disease, attacked his party
during the winter, and nearly half of his men suffered
from it. Under such conditions he was severely
handicapped, but he decided to send out three
sledge-parties — eastward, westward, and to the north.
Lieutenant Pelham Aldrich was in charge of the
western party, and although most of the sledge
crew were weakened by scurvy, they marched over
600 miles, and succeeded in reaching 82° 48' N., a
few miles farther north than Parry had reached
some fifty years previously.
In 1882 an American expedition, under Lieutenant
Greely, although terribly unfortunate in some respects,
was successful in wresting the record for " farthest
north " from the British.
We must turn aside for a moment from these efforts
to get farther and farther north, to mention the ex-
ploits of that distinguished Swedish explorer, Adolf
Erik Nordenskiold. As early as 1873 Nordenskiold
North Polar Regions.
,/
^'•
^?
o/
THE NORTH POLE 81
began to think that the North-East Passage by the
Siberian coast might, \/hen found, prove to be of
great commercial value, and after some preHminary
expeditions he, in 1878, set out in the Vega on his
great voyage, and in August the ship passed Cape
Chelyuskin, the most northerly point of the Old
World. By September, however, the Vega, when very
near to the completion of her task, was so surrounded
by ice that she could proceed no farther, and for ten
months she was held a prisoner. Not until the follow-
ing July was the Vega free to resume her voyage, and
shortly afterwards she rounded East Cape, and saluted
" the easternmost coast of Asia in honour of the com-
pleting of the North-East Passage." Nordenskiold,
both as an explorer and as a man of science, has left
the world greatly in his debt, and it has been well
said that " when he died, a vast amount of knowledge
died with him."
Nordenskiold's name, Hke Fridtjof Nansen's, is
intimately connected with exploratory work in Green-
land. Nansen was bom in 1861, and he was only
twenty-seven years of age when his devotion to
discovery led him to make an expedition on lines
that were as courageous as they were original. Up
to this date, 1888, the recognized method employed
(2,369) 6
82 THE LAST SECRETS
in Polar exploratory work had been to establish a base
where stores were placed, and from this base to march
as far as possible in various directions. But when
Nansen determined to cross Greenland from east to
west, he paid no attention to recognized methods.
With five companions he, in June, 1888, was taken in
the Jason to the ice's edge on the east coast of Green-
land, and there the explorers, hoping shortly to reach
land, took to their boats. Some time, however,
passed before they could make a landing, but eventually
a suitable place was found, and then they began their
great march. With no base to which they could
return, the party had literally taken their lives into
their hands, for failure almost certainly meant death.
Starting on 22nd August, the party, four days later,
had mounted to a height of 6,000 feet, and by the
middle of September had reached the summit (8,250
feet). Eventually the explorers managed to reach
the Danish settlement at Godthaab, and in the follow-
ing year returned to Norway. It was a fine efifort,
fruitful alike in geographical discovery and in meteoro-
logical results ; and, famous as Nansen' s name sub-
sequently and deservedly became, by no means his
least claim to honour is derived from this great
march across Greenland.
THE NORTH POLE 83
Between 1892 and 1895 the American Lieutenant
Peary, using dogs for purposes of traction, made two
successful marches across Greenland, and so prepared
himself for the attacks on the North Pole itseK —
attacks which he was ultimately to bring to a success-
ful conclusion. The date 1893 will always be re-
nowned in the history of Arctic exploration, for
during that year Nansen embarked upon his remark-
able voyage in his no less remarkable ship, the Fram.
From careful observations and investigations Nansen
was convinced that there was a continuous drift of
ice from the north-east shore of Siberia across the
Arctic Ocean. Hitherto, Arctic explorers had struggled
hard to avoid being beset by ice. Far from following
in their wake, it was Nansen's plan to get his vessel
frozen in the pack, and then to drift towards the
Pole.
It would be untruthful to say that his plan was
encouraged by the majority of Arctic experts, but
Nansen was not the man to be dissuaded from any
project which, after consideration, he had taken in
hand. For such a voyage an especially constructed
ship was necessary, and so Mr. CoUn Archer was in-
structed to build a vessel specially designed to resist
ice-pressure. The main object of Nansen and Archer
84 THE LAST SECRETS
was that " she should sHp like an eel out of the em-
braces of the ice."
Nansen calculated that the drift would take about
three years, and he provisioned the Fram for five
years. On this historic voyage Nansen was accom-
panied by twelve other adventurous men. Sailing
from Norway in July, 1893, the Kara Sea was crossed,
and early in September Cape Chelyuskin was rounded.
About a fortnight later the ship was frozen in, and the
great drift began. During the next months the Fram
was given ample opportunity to prove her worth,
and she seized it nobly. In October great pressure
from the ice was experienced, but both then and later
the ship resisted, and rose to, the pressure. During
her first year in the ice the Fram drifted a distance of
189 miles.
During the second winter, Nansen, taking Frederik
Johansen with him, and leaving Otto Sverdrup in
charge of the ship, decided to leave the Fram and try
to reach the Pole. A start was made in March, 1895,
and in less than a month 86° 28' N. was reached. At
that point the explorers had to turn south, and after
many perilous adventures, they landed, at the end
of August, on an island of the Franz-Josef group.
There they decided to winter, and there they had to
THE NORTH POLE 86
remain for nine long months. When at last they were
able to proceed, a grave disaster was only prevented
by Nansen's promptitude and courage. The explorers
were on shore, when Johansen noticed that their
kayaks (Eskimo canoes of light wooden framework
covered with seal skins) were adrift. The loss of
these boats could scarcely have meant less than death
to the explorers, and Nansen immediately jumped
into the icy water and swam to retrieve them. It
was an action as prompt as it was heroic, and it saved
the situation ; but Nansen's condition, when he
brought back the kayaks to land, has been described
as " more dead than alive," and some time passed be-
fore he fully recovered from the results of his effort.
Some weeks later the kayaks were once more made
as seaworthy as was possible under the circumstances,
and Nansen and Johansen were again embarking
on their adventurous voyage when, by good fortune,
they were found by Frederick Jackson, the leader of
the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition, which did such
good work in Franz-Josef Land. This meeting be-
tween Nansen and Jackson has been compared with
the famous one between Livingstone and Stanley,
and even if the latter was the more dramatic, the
former was as opportune, for there is no gainsaying
86 THE LAST SECRETS
that Nansen and his companion were in a most peril-
ous position. In the meantime the drift of the Fram
under Sverdrup's able leadership continued, and she
did not return to Norway until August, 1896.
The results of the Fram expedition were exceptionally
important. " They threw," Sir Clements Markham
wrote, " new Hght on the whole Arctic problem.
Nansen lifted the veil, and his expedition was the
most important in modern times. It was discovered
that there was a deep-sea ocean to the north of Spitz-
bergen and Franz-Josef Land, extending beyond the
Pole. . . ."
In 1897 a meeting was held in the Albert Hall in
honour of Nansen, whose work, both geographically
and scientifically, more than deserved the great wel-
come given to him in England. In an introduction
to his In the Northern Mists : Arctic Exploration
in Early Times, Nansen quotes words from the old
Norse chronicle, the King's Mirror, that are curiously
illuminating : —
" If you wish to know what men seek in this land [the
Arctic regions], or why men journey thither in so great danger
of their lives, then it is the threefold nature of man that draws
him thither. One part of him is emulation and desire of
fame, for it is a man's nature to go where there is likelihood
of great danger, and to make himself famous thereby. An-
THE NORTH POLE 87
other part is the desire of knowledge, for it is man's nature
to wish to know and see those parts of which he has heard,
and to find out whether they are as it was told him or not.
The third part is the desire of gain, seeing that men seek
after riches in every place where they learn that profit is to
be had, even though there is great danger in it."
And, indeed, it may well be admitted that the
factors which have helped to make the modern world
are mainly a desire for fame, a desire for knowledge,
and a desire for riches ; and woe betide the nation
that forgets the first and second of these factors, and
loses its soul in concentration upon the last of them.
II
During the years succeeding Nansen's expedition
the desire to reach the North Pole itself took posses-
sion of the minds of many brave men. Bit by bit
the Arctic regions had been mapped out; gradually
the obstacles that maintained the Pole in its splendid
isolation were being overcome. Some years were to
pass before its mysteries were unveiled, but in those
years there was an almost continuous e£Fort to probe
those mysteries.
Nansen had discovered beyond any doubt that the
88 THE LAST SECRETS
Pole lay in an ice-covered sea, an inhospitable place
enough ; but this fact did not prevent explorers from
wanting actually to locate it, and in 1900 the Duke of
the Abruzzi tried to reach it by way of Franz-Josef
Land. Owing to a frost-bitten hand, the Duke could
not take part in the main journey of his expedition,
and so Captain Cagni commanded it. The Pole with-
stood this e£Eort, but Cagni did succeed in reaching
86° 33' N., and thus beat Nansen's record for *' farthest
north."
Previous to the Abruzzi expedition, Robert Peary
had launched his first great attack upon the Pole.
This expedition lasted for four years — 1898 to 1902 —
but Peary encountered such dense packs of ice, which
blocked his way to the Polar Ocean, that he failed in
his main object.
Another attempt followed in 1906, and although
this was not crowned with complete success, Peary
made a world's record for " farthest north " by reach-
ing 87° 6'. In this expedition he nearly lost his life,
but he returned to America with the grim determina-
tion to make yet another attempt. Experience had
been bought by Peary in abundance and at a great
cost, and to this was added an energy that was
remarkable even among Polar explorers. This third
THE NORTH POLE 89
voyage to the Polar regions had, in the nature of
things, to be his last. He was, when he set out upon
it, fifty-three years of age, and although, after spend-
ing over twenty years in Arctic work, he had an
experience that was invaluable, even experience cannot
make an Arctic explorer forget that youth is also
a great asset in the Polar regions.
In May, 1908, Peary pubUshed his programme, the
main features of which are worthy of record. He
decided to use the same ship, the Roosevelt, which
had taken him to the north in his 1906 expedition.
His route was to be by way of Smith Sound ; his winter
quarters were to be at Cape Sheridan, or even nearer
to the Pole if the ship could proceed farther ; he in-
tended to use sledges and Eskimo dogs for traction ;
and, lastly, he placed his confidence in Eskimos, the
Arctic Highlanders, as the rank-and-file of his sledge
parties.
Most careful preparations were made for this expedi-
tion, and while Peary was making them he received
much practical support, but also some suggestions
that were not notably helpful. For instance, one
cheerful crank invited him to become a " human
cannon-ball " — some sort of machine was to be taken
to the North, and then, when it was pointed towards
90 THE LAST SECRETS
the Pole, the inventor assured Peary that it would
shoot him there in no time. The explorer did not
see his way to accepting such an abrupt means of
transit !
When the Roosevelt sailed on 17th July, 1908, she
had twenty-two men on board, including Peary him-
self, Robert Bartlett, master of the Roosevelt, George
Wardwell, Dr. Goodsell, Professor Marvin, Donald
McMillan, George Borop, and Matthew Henson, Peary's
negro assistant, who had accompanied him on many
expeditions.
When Peary's vast knowledge of the Polar regions
is remembered, his remarks on the essentials required
in an Arctic sledge journey must admittedly be valu-
able. " The essentials, and the only essentials," he
writes, " needed in a serious Arctic sledge journey,
no matter what the season, the temperature, or the
duration of the journey — whether one month or six —
are four : pemmican, tea, ship's biscuit, condensed
milk." * And it is interesting to note that of
these commodities he took 50,000 lbs. of pemmican,
10,000 lbs. of biscuit, 800 lbs. of tea, and 100 cases
of condensed milk on this expedition.
The Roosevelt reached Cape York, Greenland, on
♦ Robert Peary's The North Pole (Hodder and Stoughton).
THE NORTH POLE 91
1st August, and there she said a temporary good-bye
to the civilized world. There also Peary met the
Eskimos, whose friendship he had gained by many
and continuous acts of kindness. The Eskimos are,
within their Umits, a lovable and loyal people; their
good qualities are those of nice children, their bad
qualities those of mischievous children. "I have
made it a point," Peary says, "to be firm with them,
but to rule them by love and gratitude rather than
by fear and threats. An Eskimo, hke an Indian,
never forgets a broken promise — nor a fulfilled one."
These Eskimos live on the verge of starvation for
many months in the year, but if they are not troubled
by questions of morality in one sense of the word,
they are at any rate ready to share what they have
got in the way of food, or of means to obtain it, with
those who are less fortunate than themselves. Re-
ligion, as we understand it, does not enter into their
scheme of things, but they pay studious attention to
spirits — especially to Tornarsuk, who is the devil
himself, and consequently leader of all evil spirits.
One can appreciate the childlikeness of people who
will rip an old garment to shreds so that the devil
may be prevented from wearing it !
After leaving Cape York, Peary transferred himself
92 THE LAST SECRETS
for some days to the Erik, his auxiliary supply steamer,
so that he could collect as many Eskimos and dogs as
he required. By 11th August the Erik reached Etah,
and rejoined the Roosevelt. Finally, Peary selected
49 Eskimos and 246 dogs, and having transferred
them to the Roosevelt, the explorers set out to fight
their way through the 350 miles of ice-blocked water
that separated Etah from Cape Sheridan. And the
ice during that journey was in no gentle mood.
50 great were the risks that the ship might at any
time be crushed, that the boats, fully equipped and
provisioned, were always ready to be lowered at a
moment's notice.
A terrific battle with that uncompromising op-
ponent, the ice, followed, but not until 30th August
did the struggle reach its climax. On that day the
ship was " kicked about by the floes as if she had been
a football," and the pressure was so terrific that Peary
decided to dynamite the ice. This operation was
successful in reUeving the situation, but some days
passed before even the greatest optimist in the
ship could consider her free from danger. But on
5th September the Roosevelt managed to fight her
way through to Cape Sheridan; and after a project
to take her on to Porter Bay had been abandoned,
THE NORTH POLE 93
the work of unloading her was begun, and with her
Ughter load Captain Bartlett proceeded to get her
as near the shore as possible.
The first stage on the way to the Pole was behind
the explorers, and if the next stage was shorter in
distance, it was no less important a part of the
whole scheme. This second stage consisted of the
transportation of suppHes from Cape Sheridan to
Cape Columbia, ninety miles north-west of the ship.
Cape Columbia is the most northerly point of Grant
Land, and from there Peary had determined to make
his dash over the ice to the Pole. But to move an
enormous quantity of suppHes over such a distance
was work that needed much thought and care, for in
the first place some of Peary's companions were
unused to driving sledges, and, secondly, neither the
weather nor the track were likely to give them much
assistance. <
These sledging parties on the way to Cape Columbia
were soon organized, and, in addition, hunting parties
were sent out, and a supply of fresh meat for the winter
was obtained. " Imagine us," Peary wrote, " in our
winter home on the Roosevelt . . . the ship held tight
in her icy berth, a hundred and fifty yards from the
shore, the ship and the surrounding world covered
94 THE LAST SECRETS
with snow, the wind creaking in the rigging, whistling
and shrieking round the corners of the deck houses,
the temperatures ranging from zero to sixty below,
and the ice-pack in the channel outside groaning and
complaining with the movement of the tides."
In these words Peary gives us an excellent picture
of the explorers' winter home — a home upon which
the sun never shone for many months, but which, in
spite of the darkness, was a home of unceasing in-
dustry and preparation. And among the innumerable
activities that took place, none was more important
than the task of attending to the dogs. Early in
November, Peary had become anxious about these all-
important factors of his expedition. Over fifty of
them were already dead, and a few days later only
160 dogs out of the 245 with which he had arrived
were left. A change of diet from whale to walrus
meat put an end to these appalUng losses ; but Peary's
anxiety until he discovered a way to prevent them
can be easily imagined. For without any adequate
supply of dogs he knew all too well that neither he
nor any one else would ever reach the Pole.
By the end of the autumn season snow igloos had
been built on the track to Cape Columbia. We have
the best authority — namely, Peary's — ^for saying that
THE NORTH POLE 96
one of these snow-houses can be built by four good
workmen in an hour. Into this shelter the traveller
literally crawls, for the only means of entrance is
a hole at the bottom of one side, and when the last
man of the party has got in, this opening is closed up
by a block of snow already cut for the purpose.
Except for one most alarming experience, when in
a terrific gale the ice made a stupendous attempt
against the invading ship, the winter was spent rather
with anxiety about the future than with worry about
the present. No wonder that Peary speculated over
what awaited him when he started upon his great
march. After leaving Cape Columbia, over 400 miles
separated him from his goal, and these miles had to
be travelled over the ice of the Polar sea. " There
is no land," he writes, " between Cape Columbia and
the North Pole, and no smooth and very little level icey
But even ice through which the traveller must some-
times pick-axe his way is not the most serious impedi-
ment to those who would reach the Pole. The great
obstacles — the ever-present source of anxiety — are the
*' leads " which constantly appear. These " leads "
are really patches of open water, varying in extent,
which the winds and tides cause in the ice's move-
ment. For no reason that is apparent, these dangerous
96 THE LAST SECRETS
obstacles suddenly block the explorer's advance, and
little can be done save to wait for them to remove
themselves. These " leads " were to be Peary's
greatest impediment in his march, and were destined
to be fatal to one valued member of his party.
The final attack on the Pole began on 15th February,
1909, when Bartlett, with a pioneer party, left the
Roosevelt, and a week later Peary started on his way.
At this time 7 members of the expedition, 19 Eskimos,
140 dogs, and 28 sledges, divided into various parties,
were engaged in the great effort to reach the Pole.
It was arranged that all of these parties should
meet Peary at Cape Columbia on the last day of
February ; and on that day Bartlett and Borop started
from the cape with advance parties. The duties of
these advance parties were as onerous as they were
important. For it was to Bartlett that Peary looked
for a trail by which the main party could travel.
On the second day's march, after Peary had left
Cape Columbia and the land behind him, he met with
his first open " lead," and a sHght delay occurred. But
on the following day this " lead " was covered with young
ice, and Peary determined to cross it. " If the reader,"
he wrote, " wiU imagine crossing a river on a succession
of gigantic shingles, one, two, or three deep, and all
THE NORTH POLE 97
afloat and moving, he will perhaps form an idea of the
uncertain surface over which we crossed this 'lead.'
Such a passage is distinctly trying, as any moment
may lose a sledge and its team, or plunge a member
of the party into the icy water." And later on,
when Borop was crossing an open crack, his dogs
fell into the water, and the loss both of the dogs and
the sledge with its invaluable load of provisions was
only prevented by Borop's exceptional quickness and
strength.
The explorers had advanced nearly 50 miles from
Cape Columbia, when they were held up by a big
" lead," which refused most obstinately to cover itself
with ice strong enough to bear the sledges. For a
week this open water delayed the expedition, and
Peary had good reason to wonder if his most careful
preparation and organization were once more to miss
the success that they deserved. On 1 1th March, how-
ever, the parties managed to cross the " lead," and
on the march that followed they crossed the 84th
parallel.
When the explorers started on this journey, Peary
did not announce how far each one of his com-
panions was to accompany him on the march, and
presently Dr. Goodsell and MacMillan, with Eskimos,
(2,368) 7
98 THE LAST SECRETS
sledges, and dogs, turned back. Then the main ex-
pedition consisted of 16 men, 12 sledges, and 100
dogs. On 19th March, Peary revealed the programme
he intended to follow to Bartlett, Marvin, Borop,
and Henson. First of all Borop was to turn back ;
five marches farther on Marvin was to go ; and after
another five marches Bartlett was to leave the Polar
party, which would then consist of 6 men, 40 dogs,
and 5 sledges.
Unlike most programmes, this one of Peary's was
faithfully carried out. Borop returned when 85° 23'
was reached, and during the next days the explorers
advanced so rapidly that they succeeded in passing
both Nansen's and the Duke of the Abruzzi's record
for farthest north. In turn, first Bartlett and then
Marvin started upon the homeward track, and Peary
was left with 4 Eskimos — Egingwah, Seegloo, Ootah,
and Ooqueah — Henson, 5 sledges, and 40 dogs.
Of these Eskimos, Ooqueah was the only one who
had not been in any previous expedition ; but all the
same he was the most romantic of the party, because
he was intent upon winning the rewards that would
enable him to marry the girl of his choice. Glimmering
before his eyes Ooqueah saw a whale-boat, a rifle, and
other prizes whicii Peary had promised to those who
THE NORTH POLE 99
went with him to the farthest point. Not for a
moment was there any doubt about Ooqueah's keen-
ness, for he was spurred on by two of the greatest
incentives that any young man can have — a desire
to be wealthy, and a desire to marry.
Left alone with Henson and the Eskimos, Peary
still had 133 nautical miles * to travel before he reached
his goal. This distance he intended to cover in five
marches, and, provided that the gales would leave him
in peace and not open the ** leads " of water, he had
every hope of carrying out his intention.
Up to this stage in the march Peary had been
whipper-in, but in the last stages he led the van.
And during the concluding stages it must be admitted
that fortune smiled upon the travellers. True, that
in this almost breathless rush for the Pole " leads "
were not entirely absent, but such as were encountered
did not seriously delay the marches. As, however,
Peary got nearer and nearer to the Pole, the fear that
the prize might at the last moment be snatched away
from him by an impassable " lead " was constantly
with him.
On 6th April the party reached 89° 25' N., and
were within 35 miles of the Pole. So near, indeed,
* A nautical mile is approximately 2,026 yards.
100 THE LAST SECRETS
were they, that Peary writes : " By some strange shift
of feeUng the fear of the " leads " had fallen from me
completely. I now felt that success was certain. . . ."
And his confidence was justified. On April 6, 1909,
Peary, with his coloured assistant, Matthew Henson,
and the four Eskimos, reached the Pole, and there
the leader of this successful party wrote the following
note ; —
** 90° N. Lat., North Pole,
mh April 1909.
" I have to-day hoisted the national ensign of the United
States of America at this place, which my observations in-
dicate to be the North Pole axis of the earth, and have formally
taken possession of the entire region and adjacent, for and
in the name of the President of the United States of America.
I leave this record and United States flag in possession.
" Egbert E. Peary,
" United States Navy."
The explorers spent thirty hours at the Pole, and
then started upon the long journey back to the coast
of Grant Land. By 23rd April, favoured by beautiful
weather, the party had reached Cape Columbia ; so
favoured, indeed, had they been that Ootah remarked
on their arrival that " the devil is asleep or having
trouble with his wife, or we should never have come
back so easily."
THE NORTH POLE 101
On that same day Peary wrote in his diary : "I
have got the North Pole out of my system after
twenty-three years of effort, hard work, disappoint-
ments, hardships, privations, more or less suffering,
and some risks."
The joy of success, tremendous as it was, could not
but be dimmed by the news that awaited Peary on
his return to the ship. For Marvin had lost his hfe,
on the return journey, in trying to cross some young
and treacherous ice, and the loss of this gallant and
able man illustrates all too sadly the " some risks "
of which Peary wrote — risks which all explorers in
greater or less measure have to run.
As a conclusion to this chapter of adventure and
determined effort, the words of that prince of explorers,
Fridtjof Nansen, seem peculiarly appropriate. " From
first to last," he wrote, " the history of Polar explora-
tion is a single mighty manifestation of the power of
the Unknown over the mind of man."
IV
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
IM
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
(Mwp, p. 112.)
Twenty-four centuries ago a line of iEschylus —
" Egypt nurtured by the snow " — embodied a geo-
graphical theory which descended from Heaven
knows what early folk-wandering. Aristotle with
his dpyvpovv opos, the Mountain of Silver from
which the Nile flowed, continued the tradition in
literature. Meantime Sabsean Arabs, trading along
the east coast of Africa, and making expeditions
to the interior, came back with stories of great
inland seas and snow mountains near them. What
they saw may have been only Kilimanjaro and
Kenia, but the popular acceptance of their reports
points to the earlier tale Unking the snows with the
Nile valley. Greek and Roman travellers spread
the rumour, and presently it found its way, probably
through Marinus of Tyre, into the pages of the
geographer Ptolemy.
Ptolemy had no doubt about these snows. He called
106
106 THE LAST SECRETS
them the Mountains of the Moon, and definitely fixed
them as the som"ce of the river of Egypt. For cen-
turies after him the question slumbered, and men were
too busied with creeds and conquests to think much
of that fount of the Nile which Alexander the Great
saw in his dreams. When the exploration of Equa-
toria began in last century the story revived, and the
discovery of Kenia and KiHmanjaro seemed to have
settled the matter. It was true that these mountains
were a long way from the Nile watershed, but then
Ptolemy had never enjoyed much of a reputation for
accuracy.
Still doubt remained in some minds, and explorers
kept their eyes open for snow mountains which should
actually feed the Nile, since, after all, so ancient a tra-
dition had probably some ground of fact. Speke in
1861 thought he had discovered them in the chain
of volcanoes between Lake Kivu and Lake Albert
Edward, but these mountains held no snow. He
received a hint, however, which might have led to
success, for he heard from the Arabs of Unyamwezi
of a strange mountain west of Lake Victoria, seldom
visible, covered with white stufif, and so high and steep
that no man could ascend it. In 1864 Sir Samuel
Baker was within sight of Ruwenzori, and actually
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 107
saw dim shapes looming through the haze, to which
he gave the name of " Blue Mountains."
In 1875 Stanley encamped for several days upon
the eastern slopes, but he did not realize the greatness
of the heights above him. He thought they were
something like Elgon, and he christened them Mount
Edwin Arnold (a name happily not continued) ; but
he had no thought of snow or glacier, and he disbelieved
the native stories of white stuff on the top. In 1876
Gordon's emissary, Gressi, recorded a strange appari-
tion, "Uke snow mountains in the sky," which his
men saw, but he seems to have considered it a halluci-
nation. Stranger still, Emin Pasha Uved for ten years
on Lake Albert and never once saw the range — a fact
which may be partly explained by his bad eyesight.
Ruwenzori keeps its secret well. The mists from the
Semhki valley shroud its base, and only on the clearest
days, and for a very little time, can the traveller get
such a prospect as Mr, Grogan got on his famous walk
from the Cape to Cairo — " a purple mass, peak piled
upon peak, black-streaked with forest, scored with
ravine, and ever mounting till her castellated crags
shoot their gleaming tops far into the violet heavens."
The true discoverer was Stanley, who, in 1888,
suddenly had a vision of the range from the south-
108 THE LAST SECRETS
west shore of Lake Albert. Every one remembers
the famous passage : —
" While looking to the south-east and meditating upon the
events of the last month, my eyes were directed by a boy to
a mountain said to be covered with salt, and I saw a peculiar-
shaped cloud of a most beautiful silver colour, which assumed
the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain covered
with snow. Following its form downward, I became struck
with the deep blue-black colour of its base, and wondered if
it portended another tornado ; then as the sight descended
to the gap between the eastern and western plateaus I became
for the first time conscious that what I gazed upon was not
the image or semblance of a vast mountain, but the solid
substance of a real one, with its summit covered with snow.
... It now dawned upon me that this must be Ruwenzori,
which was said to be covered with a white metal or substance
believed to be rock, as reported by Kavali's two slaves."
Stanley had neither the time nor the equipment for
mountain expeditions, though to the end of his life
Ruwenzori remained for him a centre of romance.
It was his " dear wish," as he told the Royal Geo-
graphical Society shortly before his death, that some
lover of Alpine climbing would take the range in hand
and explore it from top to bottom. In 1889 one of
his companions, Lieutenant Stairs, made an attempt
from the north-west, and reached a height of nearly
1 1,000 feet. Two years later Dr. Stuhlmann, a member
of Emin's expedition, made a bold journey up the
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 109
Butagu valley on the west, discovered the wonderful
mountain vegetation, and nearly reached the snow
level. In 1895 came Mr. Scott Elliot, who was pri-
marily a botanist, but who, in spite of bad malaria,
managed to struggle as far as 13,000 feet.
Then followed troubles in Uganda, and it was not
till 1900 that the work of exploration was resumed.
To make the story clear, it is necessary to explain that
the range runs practically north and south, and that
about half-way it is cut into by two deep valleys —
the Mobuku running to the east and the Butagu run-
ning to the Semliki on the west. Fort Portal at the
northern end is the nearest station ; and as from it
the eastern side is the more accessible, it was natural
that the Mobuku valley should be chosen as the best
means of access. In 1900 Mr. Moore reached its head,
and ascended the mountain called Kiyanja to the
height of 14,900 feet. He had no sight of the range
as a whole, but he believed this to be the highest peak,
and put the summit at about 16,000 feet. In the same
year Sir Harry Johnston followed this route. He
ascended to the height of 14,828 feet on Kiyanja, and
saw from the Mobuku valley a mountain to the north,
which he named Duwoni. He came to the conclusion
that the highest altitude of the range was not under
110 THE LAST SECRETS
20,000 feet, and in this view he was followed by other
travellers, like Mr. Wylde, Mr. Grogan, and Major
Gibbons, none of whom, however, actually made
ascents of any peak.
The first serious mountaineering expedition was
made in 1905 by Mr. Douglas Freshfield and Mr. A. L.
Mumm, who suffered from such appalling weather
that they had to give up the attempt. Being ex-
perienced mountaineers, however, they reached some
valuable conclusions. From the plains they had a
clear view of the tops, and ascertained that the moun-
tain called Kiyanja at the head of the Mobuku valley
was certainly lower than a twin-peaked snow moun-
tain beyond it to the west. They also placed the
extreme height of the range at no more than 18,000
feet. Meanwhile Lieutenant Behrens, of the Anglo-
German Boundary Commission, had made an elabo-
rate triangulation, and gave to the twin tops of the
highest peak altitudes of 16,625 feet and 16,549 feet
— ^measurements, let it be noted, which were only a few
hundred feet out. One other expedition, which occu-
pied the close of the same year and the beginning of
1906, deserves mention. Mr. A. F. R. Wollaston, of
a British Museum party, found an old ice-axe in a hut
(probably left by Mr. Freshfield), and, with a few yards
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 111
of rotten rope, set oS with a companion to climb
Kiyanja. He reached a height of 16,379 feet, and also
cKmbed a peak to the north, which he believed wrongly
to be Duwoni, and which now very properly bears
his name. The whole performance was a brilliant
adventure, and Mr. WoUaston has published the story
of his travels in a delightful book.*
Such was the position when, in April, 1906, the Duke
of the Abruzzi and his party left Italy to solve once
and for aU the riddle of the mountains. The Duke
was perhaps the greatest of Uving mountaineers. As
a rock-climber his fame has filled the Alps, and no
name is more honoured at Courmayeur or the Mon-
tanvert. He had led Polar expeditions, and had made
the first ascent of the Alaskan Mount St. Elias. His
experience, therefore, had made him not only a cUmber
but an organizer of mountain travel. It was to this
latter accomplishment that he owed his success, for
Ruwenzori was not so much a cKmber's as a traveller's
problem. The actual mountaineering is not hard, but to
travel the long miles from Entebbe to the range, to cut a
path through the dense jungles of the valleys, and to
carry supplies and scientific apparatus to the high glacier
camps, required an organizing talent of the first order.
* From Ruwenzori to the Congo (John Murray).
112 THE LAST SECRETS
The Duke left no contingency unforeseen. He
took with him four celebrated Courmayeur guides,
and a staff of distinguished scientists, as well as
Cav. Vittorio Sella, the greatest of Uving mountain
photographers. So large was the expedition that two
hundred and fifty native porters were required to
carry stores from Entebbe to Fort Portal. It was not
a bold personal adventure, like Mr. WoUaston's, but a
carefully planned, scientific assault upon the mystery
of Ruwenzori. The Duke did not only seek to ascend
the highest peak, but to climb every summit, and map
accurately every mountain, valley, and glacier. The
story of the work has been officially written,* not
indeed by the leader himself, who had no time to spare,
but by his friend and former companion. Sir Filippo
de Filippi. It is an admirable account, clear and yet
picturesque, and it is illustrated by photographs and
panoramas which have not often been equalled in
mountaineering narratives.
The charm of the book is its strangeness. It tells
of a kind of mountaineering to which the world can
show no parallel. When Lhasa had been visited,
Ruwenzori remained, with the gorges of the Brahma-
* Sutoenzori ; An Account of the Expedition of H.R.H. the Duke of
the Abruzzi (Londou : Constable).
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 113
putra, one of the few great geographical mysteries
unveiled. Happily the unveiling has not killed the
romance, for the truth is stranger than any forecast.
If the Mountains of the Moon are lower than we had
believed, they are far more wonderful. Here you have
a range almost on the Equator, rising not from an
upland, like Kilimanjaro, but from the " Albertine
Depression," which is 600 or 700 feet below the average
level of Uganda ; a range of which the highest peaks
are 1,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc, which is
draped most days of the year in mist, and accessible
from the plains only by deep-cut glens choked with
strange trees and flowers. The altitude would in any
case give every stage of climate from torrid to arctic,
but the position on the Line adds something exotic
even to familiar mountain sights, draping a glacier
moraine with a tangle of monstrous growths, and
sweUing the homely Alpine flora into portents. The
freakish spirit in Nature has been let loose, and she
has set snowfields and rock aretes in the heart of a
giant hothouse.
The Duke of the Abruzzi was faced at the start with
a deplorable absence of information. Even the season
when the weather was most favourable was disputed.
Mr. Freshfield, following Sir Harry Johnston's advice,
(2,369) 8
114 THE LAST SECRETS
tried November, and found a perpetual shower-bath.
Warned by this experience, the Duke selected June
and July for the attempt, and was fortunate enough
to get sufficient clear days to complete his task, though
he was repeatedly driven into camp by violent rain.
Another matter in doubt was the best means of ap-
proach to the highest snows. The obvious route was
the Mobuku valley, but by this time it was pretty
clear that Kiyanja, the peak at its head, was not the
highest, and it was possible that there might be no
way out of the valley to the higher western summits.
Still, it had been the old way of travellers, and since
the alternative was the Butagu valley right on the
other side of the range, the Duke chose to follow the
steps of his predecessors.
Just before Butiti he got his first sight of the snow,
and made out that a double peak, which was certainly
not Johnston's Duwoni, was clearly the loftiest. Du-
woni came into view again in the lower Mobuku valley,
and the sight, combined with the known locality of
Kiyanja, enabled the expedition to take its bearings.
Duwoni was seen through the opening of a large tribu-
tary valley, the Bujuku, which entered the Mobuku
on the north side between the Portal Peaks. Now it
had been clear from the lowlands that the highest
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 115
snows were to the south of Duwoni, and must conse-
quently lie between that peak and the Mobuku valley.
The conclusion was that the Bujuku must lead to
the foot of the highest summits, while the Mobuku
could not. The discovery was the key of the whole
geography of the range. But the Duke did not at once
act upon it. He wisely decided to explore Kiyanja
first ; so, thinning out his caravan and leaving his
heavier stores at the last native village, he with his
party pushed up the Mobuku torrent.
The Mobuku vaUey falls in stages from the glacier,
and at the foot of each stage is a cliff face and a water-
fall. The soil everywhere oozes moisture, and where
an outcrop of rock or a mat of dead boughs does not
give firmer going, it is knee-deep in black mud. The
first stage is forest land — great conifers with masses
of ferns and tree-ferns below, and above a tangle of
creepers and fiaming orchids. At the second terrace
you come to the fringe of Alpine Ufe. Here is the
heath forest, of which let the narrative tell : —
" Trunks and boughs are entirely smothered in a thick
layer of mosses which hang like waving beards from every
spray, cushion and englobe every knot, curl and swell around
each twig, deform every outline and obliterate every feature,
till the trees are a mere mass of grotesque contortions, mon-
strous tumefactions of the discoloured leprous growth. No
116 THE LAST SECRETS
leaf is to be seen save on the very topmost twigs, yet the
forest is dark owing to the dense network of trunks and
branches. The soil disappears altogether under innumerable
dead trunks, heaped one upon another in intricate piles,
covered with mosses, viscous and slippery when exposed to
the air ; black, naked, and yet neither mildewed nor rotten
where they have lain for years and years in deep holes. No
forest can be grimmer and stranger than this. The vegetation
seems primeval, of some period when forms were uncertain
and provisory."
But the third terrace is stranger still. There one is
out of the forest and in an Alpine meadow between
sheer cliflFs, with far at the head the gorge of Bujon-
golo and the tongue of the glacier above it. But what
an Alpine meadow ! —
" The ground was carpeted with a deep layer of lycopodium
and springy moss, and thickly dotted with big clumps of the
papery flowers, pink, yellow, and silver white, of the heli-
chrysum or everlasting, above which rose the tall columnar
stalks of the lobelia, like funeral torches, beside huge branch-
ing groups of the monster senecio. The impression produced
was beyond words to describe ; the spectacle was too weird,
too improbable, too unlike all familiar images, and upon the
whole brooded the same grave deathly silence."
It is a commonplace to say that in savage Africa
man is surrounded by a fauna still primeval ; but in
these mountains the flora, too, is of an earlier world
— that strange world which is embalmed in our coal
d '^
-O -
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 117
seams. Under the veil of mist, among cliffs which
lose themselves in the clouds, the traveller walks in
an miearthly landscape, with the gaunt candelabra of
the senecios, the flambeaus of the lobelias, and the
uncanny blooms of the hehchryse like decorations at
some ghostly feast. The word " helichryse " calls up
ridiculous Theocritean associations, as if the sunburnt
little " creeping-gold " of Sicily were any kin to these
African marvels ! Our elders were wise when they
named the range the Mountains of the Moon, for such
things might well belong to some lunar gorge of Mr.
Wells's imagination. Beyond Kiyanja the Duke found
a little lake where a fire had raged and the senecios
were charred and withered. It was a veritable VaUey
of Dry Bones.
Bujongolo offered the expedition a stone-heap over-
hung by a cUff, and there the permanent camp was
fixed. Among mildews and lichens and pallid mist
and an everlasting drip of rain five weeks were passed
with this unpromising spot as their base. The first
business was to ascend Kiyanja. This gave little
trouble, for the ridge was soon gained, and an easy
arete to the south led to the chief point. The height
proved to be 16,988 feet, and the view from the summit
settled the geography of the range and confirmed the
118 THE LAST SECRETS
Duke's theories. For it was now clear that the ridge
at the head of the Mobuku was no part of the water-
shed of the chain, and that the Duwoni of Johnston
was to the noriih, not of the Mobuku, but of the Bujuku.
The highest summits stood over to the west, rising
from the col at the head of the Bujuku vaUey. The
Duke saw that they might also be reached by making
a detour to the south of Kiyanja, and ascending a glen
which is one of the high affluents of the Butagu, the
great valley on the west side of the system.
It may be convenient here to explain the main
features of the range, giving them the new names
which the expedition invented, and which are now
adopted by geographers. Kiyanja became Mount Baker,
and its highest point is called Edward Peak after the
then King of England. Due south, across the Fresh-
field Pass, stands Mount Luigi di Savoia, a name given
by the Royal Geographical Society and not by the
Duke, who wished to christen it after Joseph Thomson
the traveller. Due north from Mount Baker, and
separated from it by the upper Bujuku valley, is
Mount Speke (the Duwoni of Johnston), with its main
summit called Vittorio Emanuele. West of the gap
between Baker and Speke stands the highest summit
of all, Mount Stanley, with its twin peaks Margherita
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 119
and Alexandra. North of Mount Speke is Mount
Emin, and east of the latter is Mount Gessi. Five
of the great massifs cluster around the Bujuku valley,
while the sixth, Mount Luigi di Savoia, stands by
itself at the south end of the chain.
The assault on Mount Stanley was delayed for some
days by abominable weather. At last came a clear
season, and the Duke with his guides crossed Fresh-
field Pass and ascended the vaUey at the back of
Mount Baker. There they spent an evening, which
showed what Ruwenzori could be like when clouds
are absent. They found a Httle lake, embosomed in
flowers, under the cUffs, and looking to the west they
saw the sun set in crimson and gold over the great
spaces of the Congo Forest. Next day they reached
the col which bears the name of Scott Elliot, and en-
camped on one of the Mount Stanley glaciers at the
height of 14,817 feet. At 7.30 on the following morn-
ing they reached the top of the first peak, Alexandra,
16,749 feet high. A short descent and a difficult
piece of step-cutting through snow cornices took them
to the summit of Margherita (16,815 feet), the highest
point of the range : —
" They emerged from the mist into splendid clear sunlight.
At their feet lay a sea of fog. An impenetrable layer of light
120 THE LAST SECRETS
ashy-white cloud-drift, stretching as far as the eye could
reach, was drifting rapidly north-westward. From the im-
mense moving surface emerged two fixed points, two pure
white peaks sparkling in the sun with their myriad snow
crystals. These were the two extreme summits of the highest
peaks. The Duke of the Abruzzi named these summits
Margherita and Alexandra, ' in order that, under the auspices
of these two royal ladies, the memory of the two nations may
be handed down to posterity — of Italy, whose name was the
first to resound on these snows in a shout of victory, and of
England, which in its marvellous colonial expansion carries
civilization to the slopes of these remote mountains.' It was
a thrilling moment when the little tricolor flag, given by H.M.
Queen Margherita of Savoy, unfurled to the wind and sun the
embroidered letters of its inspiring motto, ' Ardisci e Spera.' "
The conquest of Mount Stanley was the culminating
point of the expedition. After that, the topography
being known, it only remained to ascend the four
massifs of Speke, Emin, Gessi, and Luigi di Savoia.
In addition, the Bujuku valley, with its tributary the
Migusi, was thoroughly explored. The aim of the
Duke being completeness, many of the peaks were
ascended several times to verify the observations.
There is an account of how from one peak in a sudden
blink of fine weather the leader saw two portions of
the expedition in different parts of the range moving
about their allotted tasks. The result of this wise
organization is that to-day the world knows every peak,
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 121
glacier, and valley in Ruwenzori far more minutely
than many habitable parts of the East African plateau.
The expedition was not only a fine adventure, but a
wonderful piece of solid and enduring scientific work.
No Englishman will grudge that the honours of the
pioneer fell to so brilliant a climber and so unwearied
a traveller as the Duke of the Abruzzi. The Italian
name has always stood high in mountaineering annals,
and the Duke has long ago earned his place in that
inner circle of fame which includes Mummery and
Guido Rey, Moore and Zsigmondy.
The riddle of equatorial snow has been solved, and
there is nothing very startling in the answer. The
upper part of the mountains has no marvels to show
equal to the giant groundsels and lobelias and the
forests of heath on the lower slopes. The glaciers are
all smaU, without tributaries, as in Norway ; and
there are no real basins, but merely " a sort of glacier
caps from which ice digitations flow down at divers
points." All the same, the glacier formation is more
respectable than Mr. Freshfield thought, for he saw
only the small ice-stream at the head of the Mobuku,
and was not aware of the much greater one from Mount
Stanley which descends to the upper Bujuku valley.
122 THE LAST SECRETS
The limit of perpetual snow is about 14,600 feet. Mr.
Freskfield was so struck by the small size of the Mobuku
torrent where it issues from the glacier, and by its
clearness, that he thought it must come from some
underground spring rather than from a real melting
of the ice. He maintained that tropical glaciers were
consumed mainly by evaporation and only in a smaU
degree by melting. The Duke has, however, made
it clear that the glaciers of Ruwenzori are subject to
the same conditions as those of the Alps, and that
their streams are true glacier torrents. The limpidity
of the water he ascribes to their almost complete
immobility, which means that there is no grinding
of the detritus in their beds.
On the whole, the range offers no great scope for
the energies of the mountaineer. The ice and snow
work is easy, and even the huge cornices, such as are
found on Margherita, are fairly safe for the climber,
owing to the way in which they are propped by a forest
of ice stalactites caused by the rapid melting of the
snow. On the other hand, there is abundance of rock
climbing of every degree of difficulty, for the moun-
tains below the snow-hne fall very sheer to the valleys.
Luigi di Savoia, Emin, and Gessi are virtually rock
peaks ; an isolated summit, Mount Cagni, is wholly
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 123
rock ; and there are fine rock faces on Mount Baker
and the Edward and Savoia Peaks of Mount Stanley.
I doubt, however, if Ruwenzori will ever be a centre
for the rock gymnast. The weather would damp the
ardour of the most earnest habitue of Chamonix or
San Martino. A few hours of sunshine once a week
are not enough in which to plan out routes up cliffs
whose scale far exceeds the measure of the Alps. The
Grepon or the Dru would have long remained virgin
if their crags had been for ever shmy with moisture
and draped in mist, and the climber had to descend
to no comfortable Montanvert, but to a clammy tent
among swamps and mildews.
And yet those peaks remain almost the strangest of
the world's wonders, and their ascent will always be one
of the finest of human adventures. They are Moun-
tains of the Moon rather than of this common earth.
The first discoverers brought back tales which were
scarcely credible — ice-peaks of Himalayan magnitude,
soaring out of flame-coloured tropic jungles. For
long mountaineers were consumed with curiosity as
to what mysteries lay behind that veil of mist. For
aU they knew, equatorial snow might be difficult
beyond the skill of man, and Ruwenzori the
eternal and unapproachable goal of the adventurer's
124 THE LAST SECRETS
ambition. The truth is prosaic beside these imagin-
ings. Any man who can afford the time and the
money, who selects the right time of year, and is
sound in wind and limb, can stand on the dome of
Margherita.
But the experience will still be unique, for these
mountains have no fellows on the globe. There is a
certain kinship between the tale of the first ascent of
Mount McKinley in Alaska,* and that of the Duke
of the Abruzzi. That gaunt icy peak is as unlike the
ordinary snow mountain as Ruwenzori. The climb
began from the glacier at a height of 1,000 feet,
and 19,000 feet of snow and ice had to be sur-
mounted. The Alaskan giant and the Mountains of
the Moon stand at the opposite poles of climate,
but both are alike in being outside the brotherhood
of mountains. They are extravagances of Nature,
moulded without regard to human needs. For moun-
tains, when all has been said, belong to the habitable
world. They are barriers between the settlements of
man, and from their isolation the climber looks to
the vineyards and cornlands and cities of the plains.
An ice-peak near the Pole and a range veiled in the
steaming mists of the Line are solitudes more retired
* See Chapter VL
THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 125
and sanctuaries more inviolate. The common moun-
tain-top lifts a man above the tumult of the lowlands,
but these seem to carry him beyond the tumult of
the world.
V
THE SOUTH POLE
10
THE SOUTH POLE
{Map, p. U4.)
I
The imaginations of bold men were captured by
the idea of Arctic exploration for centuries before
the Antarctic was even thought of as a field for
discovery. The Arctic regions have a history dating
back to the days of King Alfred ; the Antarctic can
make no such boast as this, and it is true to say that
attention was first drawn to the Far South by the
map-makers.
Much praise is due to the early map-makers ; but as
regards the Far South it must be admitted that they
indulged in considerable guesswork. OrteHus, for in-
stance, in his map of the world which was pubUshed
in Antwerp in 1570, had the temerity to draw the
coast of " Terra Australis nondum cognita " round
the world as far north, in two places, as the Tropic
of Capricorn.
Hakluyt did, in 1599, omit the Southern continent
(2.369) 120 9
130 THE LAST SECRETS
from his celebrated map of the world, an abstinence
on his part that deserves to be mentioned. But
fictions, in spite of Hakluyt, continued to appear in
later maps ; and if they did nothing else, they were
at least useful in directing the thoughts of navigators
towards the Antarctic.
Accident rather than design was, however, respon-
sible for the first discoveries in the South. In 1520
Magellan found the strait which is known by hla
name, and during the sixteenth century what dis-
coveries were made in the direction of the South
were due to contrary winds. Owing to gales, Sir
Francis Drake, in 1578, reached in latitude 56° S.
" the uttermost part of the land towards the South
Pole," and so, sadly against his will, made dis-
coveries. And it was owing to what has happily
been called " a discovery-causing gale " that some
Dutch ships, which had set out in 1598 for the exciting
but scarcely laudable purpose of plundering the coasts
of Chile and Peru, were scattered in aU directions.
One of these ships, a mere baby of 18 tons,
was driven to 64° S., and there her captain, Dirk
Gerritsz, sighted " high land with mountains covered
with snow, like the land of Norway."
If proof of the universal ignorance of the South
THE SOUTH POLE 131
at the beginning of the seventeenth century is needed,
we have the expedition of Pedro Fernandez de Qmros.
Quiros was commissioned by the King of Spain,
PhiHp III., to undertake a voyage for the purpose
of annexing the South Polar continent ; and after
this annexation had been completed, he was com-
manded to convert the inhabitants to the true faith.
It was an ambitious programme, and it was far
indeed from being carried out. In fact, the result
of the expedition was almost comical. Quiros dis-
covered the largest island of the New Hebrides, and
in the behef that it was part of the Southern con-
tinent, he not only annexed it, but also the South
Pole itself, to the Crown of Spain ! This expedition
must be considered the first Antarctic expedition,
but there is no denying that its results were more
ludicrous than encouraging.
Little progress was made during the seventeenth
century in adding to the world's knowledge of the
South, but in one way and another the map-makers
received severe buffets. Towards the end of that
century and the beginning of the next, some ships
reached 62° S. and 63° S., and encountering great
icebergs, gained knowledge that tended to disperse
the idea of a huge continent, from which men could
132 THE LAST SECRETS
reap wealth and live in comfort while reaping it. In
spite, however, of this waning behef in a fertUe and
populous Southern continent, several voyages were
undertaken to look for it ; but it is to be noted that
the men who made these adventurous journeys were
not in the least interested in exploration for explora-
tion's sake. The reason why they made these expedi-
tions was mainly because they hoped to enrich them-
selves. Not until the latter half of the eighteenth
century was there any change in what may be called
the spirit of exploration ; and then, in 1764, the Eng-
lish Government issued instructions to Commodore
Byron which clearly showed that the importance of
discovery, for discovery's sake alone, was beginning
to be reaUzed.
Science had been making progress, and the desire
really to know, and no longer to guess at, the extent
and nature of the world, perceptibly increased. Scien-
tists, engaged solely on scientific work, accompanied
both the expeditions of Marion and Kerguelen, and
when Captain James Cook sailed in 1772 from Dept-
ford, on what was the first British Antarctic expedi-
tion, he was also accompanied by scientists.
The name of James Cook will always be given a
place of honour among explorers, for, quite apart
THE SOUTH POLE 133
from the discoveries that he made, he set an example
of courage in facing dangers and difficulties that can
never be forgotten. He and all the earlier navigators,
we must remember, had to undertake their voyages
in ships that were totally unfit to encounter ice. And
when this fact is realized, we are compelled to admire
the pertinacity with which they carried out their work,
and to recognize that the results of their efforts were,
under the circumstances, magnificent.
It has been well said that James Cook defined the
Antarctic region and that James Ross discovered it ;
and, indeed, it would be difficult to overestimate the
importance either of Cook's voyages or of those sub-
sequently undertaken by Ross.
January 17, 1773, was a red-letter day in the annals
of exploration, for during its forenoon Cook crossed
the Antarctic Circle for the first time. Icebergs and
loose pack-ice were then surrounding him, but he
pushed on until he sighted closely packed ice. In his
opinion he might possibly have pushed his way through
this ice, but in such a ship as the Resolution (462 tons)
he did not consider himself justified in making so
dangerous an experiment. The latitude that he
reached was 71'' 10' S., longitude 106° 54' W.
Cook's expedition returned to Portsmouth in July,
134 THE LAST SECRETS
1775, and then the value of his voyage was recognized.
He had made the circuit of the Southern ocean in a
high latitude, and had for ever crushed the idea of
a fertile and fruitful Southern continent. If land lay
beyond the Antarctic Circle, Cook thought that it
must consist of " countries condemned to everlasting
rigidity by Nature, never to yield to the warmth of
the sun, for whose wild and desolate aspect I find no
words." Cook, in short, had revealed the limits of
the habitable globe, and his accounts of what he
had encountered in the Far South did not encourage
men, who were anxious to find land in which for-
tunes could quickly be made, to think longingly of
the Antarctic.
After Cook's return no serious attempt at geo-
graphical discoveries in the South was made until
the Russian Government, in 1819, sent an expedition,
under Captain Bellingshausen, to the Southern seas.
Bellingshausen's ambition was to rival Cook's feat of
making the circuit of the Southern ocean in high lati-
tude, and he achieved it. He was also the first ex-
plorer definitely to discover land within the Antarctic
Circle.
Two or three years later James Weddell, whose real
business was seahng, reached a latitude of 14° 16' S.,
THE SOUTH POLE 135
more than three degrees to the south of Cook's
farthest point ; and for nearly twenty years Weddell's
record remained intact.
During the first half of the nineteenth century the
Southern seas became the scene of extensive ^eaUng
industries, and however much we may regret the whole-
sale slaughter that took place, we have to confess
that some of these sealers made important geograph-
ical discoveries. Both Captain John Biscoe and
Captain John Balleny were engaged in the Antarctic
sealing trade, but they were fortunate enough to be
employed by the firm of Enderby. Charles Enderby
instructed his captains not to neglect geographical
discovery, and his instructions were faithfully carried
out. To the enterprise of Enderby, and to the courage
and perseverance of his captains, we owe the discovery
of Graham Land, Enderby Land, Kempe Island, and
Sabrina Land.
A French expedition under Captain D'Urville,
and an American one under Captain Wilkes, followed
in 1840. D'Urville, who encountered so many ice-
bergs that he felt as if he was " in the narrow streets
of a city of giants," sighted land in latitude 66" S.,
longitude 140*' E., and named this coast Adelie Land.
Wilkes also claimed to have discovered land ; but of
136 THE LAST SECRETS
his claims one of our greatest explorers has written :
" Had he been more circumspect in his reports of land,
all would have agreed that his voyage was a fine
performance."
Two or three years before D'Urville and Wilkes
set out upon their voyages, Colonel Sabine, at a
meeting of the British Association, read a paper on
the subject of terrestrial magnetism, and the result
was that Polar exploration received a great incentive.
By this time the importance of terrestrial magnetism
in regard to the navigation of ships was admitted,
and the Government was petitioned to send a naval
expedition for the purpose of increasing our knowledge
of this science in the South. A favourable reply was
received from Lord Melbourne, and in 1839 Sir James
Ross was appointed to command an expedition whose
object was rather magnetic research than geographical
discovery. Two old bomb vessels, the Erebus (370
tons) and the Terror (340 tons), were selected by Ross,
and when their bows had been strengthened he had
at his disposal the first vessels that could be navigated
among the Southern pack-ice. A detailed account of
Ross's achievements cannot be given, but of them
Captain Scott wrote : " The high mountain ranges
and the coastUne of Victoria Land were laid down with
THE SOUTH POLE 137
comparative accuracy from Cape North in latitude 71
to Wood Bay in latitude 74, and their extension was
indicated less definitely to McMurdo Bay in latitude
77^. . . . Few things could have looked more hopeless
than an attack upon that ice-bound region which lay
within the Antarctic Circle ; yet out of this desolate
prospect Ross wrested an open sea, a vast mountain
region, a smoking volcano (Erebus), and a hundred
problems of interest to the geographer." *
The highest latitude reached by Ross was 78° 10'
S., and he described the huge wall of ice which he
sighted there and named the Great Barrier, as a
" mighty and wonderful object, far beyond anything
we could have thought of or conceived." This Barrier
was in later years found to be 400 miles wide, and of
even greater length.
Slowly, very slowly, the Far South was being com-
pelled to reveal some of its secrets, but in spite of the
interest and enthusiasm caused by Ross's discoveries,
many years passed, after his return to England in
1843, before further steps were taken to make geo-
graphical discoveries in the Antarctic.
But during this period, in which geographical enter-
prise languished, scientific research was being carried
* The Voyage of the "Discovery" (John Murray), page 16.
138 THE LAST SECRETS
on. A great desire to increase the knowledge of the
science of oceanography had sprung up, and as a
practical outcome of the labours of scientists and in-
ventors, the Challenger expedition, excellently equipped
for scientific research, set out under the command of
Captain Nares in January 1873. This expedition was
in itself most important, but it is not beUttling it to
say that part of its value in the history of Antarctic
exploration Ues in the fact that it stimulated interest
in the Far South, and this interest gradually increased
until the wish to solve the mysteries of the South
Polar regions became dominant in the minds of many
men in England and Germany. In 1885 the British
Association appointed an Antarctic Committee, and
some two years later this Committee reported in
favour of further exploration.
Great difficulties, chiefly financial, had, however,
to be faced by the supporters of this expedition, and
a shrewd blow was received when the Board of Trade
refused to recommend a grant of money because there
were no trade returns from the Antarctic regions ! — a
reply that might produce a derisive smile from the
most zealous of economists. For the moment the idea
of Antarctic exploration had received a decided set-
back. But determined men were working to conquer
THE SOUTH POLE 139
the practical difficulties ; and none more determined
than Sir Clements Markham, who was elected President
of the Royal Greographical Society in May 1893.
No sooner was it generally known that a real effort
was being made in England to make further discoveries
in Antarctica — as it was by this time called — than
several other countries were stimulated at various
dates to send out expeditions. Borchgrevink, a Nor-
wegian, De Gerlache, a Belgian, Otto Nordenskiold, a
Swede, and Charcot, a Frenchman, led expeditions,
all of which did valuable work in the South.
n
In November, 1893, a meeting of the Royal Greo-
graphical Society was held, and the duties of the pro-
jected British expedition were stated. The first duty
was " to determine the nature and extent of the
Antarctic continent ; " the fifth was " to obtain as
complete a series as possible of magnetic and mete-
orological observations." Such an expedition was
intended both to encourage maritime enterprise and
to add to the world's knowledge. From the outset
the promoters had decided that their expedition
should be under naval control, but the Government
140 THE LAST SECRETS
could not be persuaded to take charge of it. The
Admiralty, however, assisted both with the loan of
instruments and by granting leave to officers and
men on full pay.
Innumerable obstacles continued to hamper the pro-
moters on every side, but they were slowly removed,
and at last the ship was launched at Dundee in March,
1901, and christened the Discovery.
Sir Clements Markham, fourteen years before, had,
in his own mind, selected the fittest commander if
an expedition to the South ever became practicable.
The name of this commander was Robert Falcon
Scott, and after much opposition had been overcome
— opposition which Sir Clements described as " harder
to force a way through than the most impenetrable
of ice-packs " — Scott's appointment was confirmed.
A great attack upon the Antarctic regions was about
to be made, but it is worthy of record that in the in-
structions issued to Captain Scott no mention of the
South Pole as an objective was made.
By July the labour of preparation for the expedition
was almost finished, and on August 5, 1901, the
Discovery was visited by King Edward VII. and
Queen Alexandra, and then started on her adventur-
ous voyage. We can easily understand Scott's anxiety
THE SOUTH POLE 141
to be up and away, for he had no Polar experience
to help and guide him, and his desire to justify the
confidence placed in him must have been intense.
In the Discovery, in addition to Scott himself, were
several men whose names were destined to become
famous in the history of Polar exploration. Ernest
H. Shackleton was a second-Ueutenant ; Ernest A.
Wilson was described as surgeon, artist, and vertebrate
zoologist ; Edgar Evans was a petty officer ; Frank
Wild and Thomas Crean were A.B.'s ; WilUam Lashley
was a stoker. Surely the nucleus of a goodly company.
Lyttelton, New Zealand, had been chosen for the
headquarters of the expedition in the South, and the
Discovery arrived there on 30th November. She
stayed for three weeks to re-fit and take in provisions,
and then started upon the next stage of her eventful
journey. The Antarctic Circle was crossed on 3rd
January, and soon afterwards the pack was on all
sides of the ship ; but she behaved splendidly, and
Scott was dehghted with the way she forced herself
through the ice.
Scott's original intention had been that the Discovery
should not winter in the Antarctic, but that, having
landed a party of men, she should return northward
before the ice made such a journey impossible. A
142 THE LAST SECRETS
hut had been provided for this party, but in February
a spot was found in McMurdo Sound in which it was
thought that the ship would pass the winter in safety.
Consequently Scott decided to use the Discovery as his
headquarters, and to utihze the hut for other purposes.
The task of erecting the huts (in addition to the
main hut there were two smaller ones for magnetic
work) was difficult, but it was eventually accom-
pUshed, and the party began to settle down to spend
the approaching winter. Before, however, the winter
set in, Scott, knowing how ignorant he and his com-
panions were of sledging, was anxious to gain as much
experience as possible. And the result of the sledging
expeditions that were made only showed how urgently
this experience was needed. " Even at this time
[early in March]," Scott wrote, " I was conscious
how much there was to be learnt, and felt that we
must buy our experience through many a discomfort ;
and on looking back I am only astonished that we
bought that experience so cheaply, for clearly there
were the elements of catastrophe as well as of dis-
comfort in the disorganized condition in which our
sledge-parties left the ship." *
When the Discovery was brought into McMurdo
♦ The Voyage of the " Discovery" page 170.
THE SOUTH POLE 143
Sound there was good reason to suppose that she would
soon be frozen in. But weeks passed before the sea
became frozen, and until the ship was firmly fixed
in the ice there was always a chance that she might
be driven away by a gale and be unable to return.
This uncertainty hampered operations for some time,
and it was not until the last days of March, 1902,
that the ship was satisfactorily frozen in.
The sun departed at the end of April, and during the
long winter that followed the party of explorers had
much to occupy them and to discuss. Scott had taken
dogs with him for sledging purposes, but although he
knew that they must increase his radius of action,
he always detested the idea of using them because of
the suffering that must necessarily be caused. But
the question of using dogs was only one of the many
problems in connection with sledging that was debated
during that Antarctic winter.
In judging the journeys that followed in the spring,
it is to be remembered that as far as the Antarctic
regions are concerned they were pioneer efforts, and
also that the conditions of Antarctic sledging differ
considerably from those of the Arctic. In these
journeys Scott and his companions were taught
lessons that were afterwards of the greatest value
144 THE LAST SECRETS
to other explorers as well as to themselves — lessons
that nothing except experience could teach.
The journey that Scott, with WUson, Shackleton,
and several dogs, began on 2nd November with the
object of pushing as far south as possible, was accom-
panied at the outset by a supporting party ; but this
party turned back by the 16th, and Scott, Wilson, and
Shackleton had immediate cause to know how stren-
uous a task they had before them. The dogs were
already causing anxiety, and were quite unable to do
the work expected from them. Relay work, which
meant that each mile had to be travelled three times,
became the order of the day, and in consequence
the advance towards the South was greatly hindered.
Soon afterwards the men themselves began to suffer
from blistered noses, cracked hps, and painful eyes ;
but on the 21st Scott took a meridian altitude, and
found the latitude to be 80° 1'.
In spite of all discomforts and anxieties, Scott was
in a happy mood that night when he wrote : " All
our charts of the Antarctic regions show a plain white
circle beyond the eightieth parallel. ... It has always
been our ambition to get inside that white space, and
now we are there the space can no longer be a blank ;
this compensates for a lot of trouble."
-\^
South Polar Regions.
THE SOUTH POLE 146
As the advance laboriously continued, the condition
of the dogs, to Scott's poignant sorrow, went from
bad to worse, and by 21st December the question of
turning back had to be considered. At this time
additional anxiety was caused by Shackleton, who
was showing symptoms of scurvy ; but Christmas
Day was in sight, and as on that festival the travellers
had decided to have a really satisfying meal, they
resolved to push on farther.
Their meal on Christmas Day put new life into the
party ; but they realized all too acutely that their food
suppUes were so inadequate that, if they were to
continue the advance they must be prepared to face
the risk of famine. There were, however, strong
incentives to urge them on their way. Each day took
them farther and farther into regions hitherto un-
trodden by the feet of men. Who can blame them
for taking the risks that were involved in their de-
termination to continue the march ?
But on 27th December, Wilson, whose industry in
sketching and determination not to give in were
beyond praise, was suffering so severely from snow-
bhndness that he had to march blindfold ; and at last
the decision to turn back had to be made. Observa-
tions taken at their last camp showed that they had
(2,369) 10
146 THE LAST SECRETS
reached between 82° 16' and 82° 17' S.— a finer record
than Scott anticipated, after he had reahzed that the
dogs were unable to fulfill the hopes placed in them.
The return march was a prolonged period of sus-
pense. By January 9, 1903, only four out of the
nineteen dogs which had started on the journey were
aUve, and on the 15th the last of them had to be
killed. " I think," Scott wrote, " we could all have
wept." Even more serious was the fact that at this
time Shackleton became seriously ill.
A grim struggle followed, for although Shackleton
showed unending courage he was suffering severely
from scurvy, and Scott and WUson, who were them-
selves attacked in a lesser degree by this disease,
often had cause to wonder whether this return journey
was not beyond their powers. It was with feelings
of profound thankfulness that, at the beginning of
February, Scott and his companions reached the ship.
For ninety -three days they had been on the march, and
during that time they had travelled 960 statute miles.
When the explorers reached their goal they found
that the reHef ship, the Morning, had arrived, and
Shackleton returned in her ; but the Discovery, after
being so reluctant to freeze firmly into the ice, refused
entirely to thaw out, and consequently Scott and
THE SOUTH POLE 147
most of his original party spent a second winter in the
Antarctic. During this additional year Scott, with
Edgar Evans and Lashley as his companions, made a
wonderful western journey, in which adventures
enough to last ordinary men for a lifetime were almost
part of the daily routine.
Not until February, 1904, was the Discovery freed
from the ice, and on 10th September she reached
Spithead after an absence from England of over three
years. In those years a crop of most useful informa-
tion had been gathered, and many geographical dis-
coveries had been made. Among the latter were
King Edward Land, Ross Island, and the Victoria
Mountains, and — most important of all — the great ice-
cap on which the South Pole is situated.
Not for some years yet was the South Pole to reveal
its secret, but Scott's first expedition may truthfully
be said to have shown the way towards that revela-
tion. In the years to come Amundsen frankly admitted
how carefully he and his companions studied the
accounts of Scott's and Shackleton's expeditions.
Ill
After Scott's return from his first visit to the
Antarctic no further attempt was immediately made
148 THE LAST SECRETS
to visit the Far South. But that great explorer,
Ernest Shackleton, had seen enough of the South to
be gripped by the desire to solve more of its problems,
and in the Geographical Journal of March, 1907, he
stated the programme of a proposed expedition. In
this programme Shackleton said : " I do not intend to
sacrifice the scientific utihty of the expedition to a
mere record-breaking journey, but say frankly, all the
same, that one of my great efforts will be to reach the
southern geographical Pole."
The financial difficulties that seemed to be insepar-
able from Polar expeditions followed, but they were
ultimately removed, and on July 30, 1907, the Nimrod
sailed for New Zealand.
Bearing in mind the failure of the dogs in Scott's
expedition, Shackleton decided to use Manchurian
ponies as his principal means of traction. The utmost
care was taken in preparing the equipment and in
choosing the staff to accompany the expedition.
Shackleton intended to land a shore party, and among
this party were Frank Wild and Ernest Joyce (who
had been with Scott), Douglas Mawson, Lieutenant
J. B. Adams, Dr. E. Marshall, Raymond Priestley,
and G. E. Marston.
Before leaving England, Shackleton decided, if
THE SOUTH POLE 149
possible, to establish his winter quarters on King
Edward VII. Land in preference to Scott's old quarters
at Hut Point in McMurdo Sound ; but he was unable
to carry out this plan, and ultimately he landed close
to Cape Royds on the east coast of Ross Island. On
February 22, 1908, his ship, the Nimrod, started upon
her journey to New Zealand.
The winter quarters that had necessarily to be chosen
were separated from Hut Point by some 20 miles of
frozen ice, and Shackleton was greatly disappointed
that he was prevented from landing on King Edward
VII. Land, where he would not only have broken fresh
ground, but would also have been considerably nearer
to the Pole. In the Hght of subsequent events it is of
interest to note that Shackleton, in his search for winter
quarters off the Barrier, looked with eagerness upon a
bay which he named " The Bay of Whales," but
owing to the conditions of the ice he thought it neces-
sary to leave this spot as quickly as possible. In
another respect this expedition met with poor for-
tune — namely, in the loss of ponies. When the party
settled down to spend the winter only four ponies
were still ahve, and it is no cause for wonder that they
were watched with the closest attention. And as a
Manchurian pony has been endowed with more than
150 THE LAST SECRETS
his fair share of original sin, he requires a very great
deal of watching.
Before the winter set in, an attempt was made to
reach the top of Mount Erebus, and this attempt met
with a success that acted as a tonic both to those who
took part in it and to those who had remained in
winter quarters. As soon as mid-winter day had
passed, Shackleton began to make arrangements for
the sledging work that had to be done in the approach-
ing spring. Depots had to be laid in the direction
of the South Pole, which was over 880 statute miles
distant from Cape Royds.
These preparations went on apace, and with a view
to starting on the Southern march from the nearest
possible point to the Pole, stores, etc., were transferred
to Hut Point, and depots were also laid to help the
travellers on their way. Adams, Marshall, and Wild
were chosen to accompany Shackleton in this deter-
mined effort to reach the South Pole, and on 29th
October they set out with the four ponies and the four
sledges. By 3rd November they had left the sea-ice
and were on the Barrier ; but instead of finding a
better surface they found it increasingly difficult.
At the outset, however, the ponies did splendid work,
though one of them, on 9th November, nearly dis-
THE SOUTH POLE 151
appeared into " a great fathomless chasm." At the
time the travellers were in a nest of crevasses, and
Adams's pony suddenly went down a crack. For-
tunately, with help from Wild and Shackleton, the
pony and the sledge were saved from falling into this
abyss ; but it was an alarming incident, for, as all the
cooking gear and biscuits and a large portion of the
oil were on this sledge, the loss of it would have been
an irretrievable disaster to the Southern journey.
The 26th November was a day to be remembered
by Shackleton and his companions, for at night they
found that they had reached latitude 82° 18' S., and
so had passed Scott's " farthest south." On 1st De-
cember, latitude 83" 16' S. was reached, but by this
time three of the ponies had been killed, and only one
was left. A few days later this last pony disappeared
down a crevasse, and nearly took Wild and the sledge
with him. Serious as the loss of this gallant pony
was, there was great cause for thankfulness that Wild
and the sledge had almost miraculously been saved.
Had the sledge gone, only two sleeping bags would
have been left for the four men, and the equipment
would have been so short that the explorers could
scarcely have got back to winter quarters.
Presently the travellers left the Barrier and attacked
152 THE LAST SECRETS
the great Beardmore Glacier which was between them
and the plateau. On 9th December, 340 geographical
miles lay between them and the Pole, and progress
was painfully slow, for the surface consisted mainly
of rotten ice through which their feet continually
broke. A week later they had travelled over nearly
100 miles of crevassed ice, and had risen 6,000 feet ;
but the plateau which they so eagerly longed to reach
still lay ahead of them. " Never," Shackleton wrote,
" do I expect to meet anything more tantaUzing than
the plateau." Appalling surfaces, to walk on which
Wild described as like walking over the glass roof of a
station, continued after the plateau had been reached,
and before Christmas arrived it was obvious, if the
advance was to be continued, that absolute hunger,
amounting almost to starvation, stared the explorers
in the face.
• On the evening of New Year's Day, 1909, the Pole
was only 172^ miles distant, but the men's strength
was nearly exhausted. The thermometer remained
obstinately below zero, and on 6th January there were
over 50 degrees of frost, with a blizzard and drift.
A last dash onwards followed, and on 9th January
Shackleton and his party reached 88** 23' S., and left
the Union Jack flying on the plateau. The attempt
THE SOUTH POLE 153
to reach the Pole had failed ; but it was a gallant
attempt, and the homeward marches that followed
show clearly enough that to have advanced farther
was beyond the powers of the men. Indeed, the
return journey was a terrible experience — a grim
struggle against starvation ; and to add to the misery
of it, dysentery — owing, in Shackleton's opinion, to
eating diseased pony's meat — attacked each member
of the party. All that was possible had been done,
and had not the wind been behind the explorers during
one of their acutest periods of suffering, it is im-
probable that they would ever have reached their
winter quarters.
While Shackleton was making his great march, a
party, consisting of David, Mawson, and Mackay, had
set out, with a view to determining the position of
the south magnetic Pole. In this they were success-
ful, the mean position of the magnetic Pole being
marked down by Mawson as in latitude 72° 25' S.,
longitude 155° 16'. This was a great triumph for the
explorers, and, needless to say, it was not gained
without many perilous adventures and narrow escapes.
In March, 1909, the Nimrod returned safely to
Lyttelton, New Zealand, where Shackleton and his
men met with the warmest of welcomes. Once again
164 THE LAST SECRETS
the South Pole had resisted the attempt to locate it,
but the time was drawing near for its mysteries to be
disclosed.
Ill
When, on September 13, 1909, Captain Scott pub-
Ushed his plans for a British Antarctic expedition
in the following year, Roald Amundsen was not think-
ing about the Far South. The Fram, it is true, was
being prepared for a third voyage, but the Arctic
was again to be her destination. Then, during the
September of 1909 came the news that Peary had
reached the North Pole. One of the great secrets of
the world had been revealed ; but another was still
undiscovered, and Amundsen's thoughts were promptly
turned from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
For various reasons Amundsen did not announce
his change of plans, and when the Fram sailed in
August, 1910, only a very few people knew where she
was bound for. Not until the ship left Madeira did
Amundsen announce his destination to the men who
were accompanying him, and they received the news
with joy.
In two or three respects Amundsen's expedition
differed considerably from Scott's new expedition.
THE SOUTH POLE 155
Amundsen, for instance, relied on dogs for his motive
power ; Scott relied on ponies. Then, again, Amundsen
decided to make his winter headquarters off the Bay
of Whales, which was a degree farther south than
McMurdo Sound, where Scott wintered. Scott was
to take the Beardmore Glacier as his route to the
South Pole ; Amundsen's plan, when he set out
for the Pole, was to leave Scott's route alone
and push straight south from his starting-place.
" Our starting-point lay 350 geographical miles,"
Amundsen wrote, " from Scott's winter quarters in
McMurdo Sound, so there could be no question of
encroaching upon his sphere of action." Lastly, it
must be mentioned that the Norwegians were as at
home on ski as they were on their feet, while most
of Scott's men were at their best only moderate
performers upon ski.
All went well with the Fram on her voyage to the
South. She crossed the Antarctic Circle on January
2, 1911, and twelve days later she was in the Bay of
Whales. In landing on the Great Barrier, Amundsen
knew that he was taking a considerable amount of
risk, for there was no certainty that it was not afloat
where he landed on it from the Bay of Whales. In
Amundsen's opinion, however, the Barrier there rests
166 THE LAST SECRETS
" upon a good solid foundation, probably in the form
of smaU islands, skerries, or shoals." *
And indeed the Barrier treated him well. The
landing was performed with supreme ease, and enough
seals were found to reheve any possible anxiety as to
the supply of fresh meat. Penguins, those delightful
birds which provide both humour and food for visitors
to Antarctica, were not plentiful, and those that were
seen were chiefly of the Adehe species.
" Pramheim," the hut in which the South Pole
party were to live during the winter, was soon erected,
and Amundsen found infinite satisfaction in the
number of dogs which were safely landed. So far
from losing dogs on the voyage, he had started with
97 and finished with 116, a most welcome addition.
The Fram, leaving eight men to winter on shore,
was due to sail in the middle of February upon an
oceanographical cruise, but before leaving she re-
ceived some unexpected visitors. On 4th February,
Captain Scott's ship, the Terra Nova, with the party
which had vainly hoped to land on King Edward VII.
Land, came into the Bay of Whales.
The news that Amundsen was safely estabUshed
reached Scott on 22nd February, and he could not fail
• Amundsen's The South Pde (John Murray), Vol. I., page 49.
THE SOUTH POLE 167
to be impressed by it. " One thing only," he wrote
characteristically, " fixes itself definitely in my mind.
The proper, as well as the wiser, course for us is to
proceed exactly as though this had not happened ;
to go forward and do our best for the honour of the
country without fear or panic. There is no doubt
that Amundsen's plan is a very serious menace to
ours. He has a shorter distance to the Pole by 60
miles. I never thought he could have got so many
dogs safely to the ice. But above and beyond all,
he can start his journey early in the season — an im-
possible condition with ponies." * Words that, in
the Ught of future events, are more than ordinarily
significant.
Before the winter set in Amundsen determined to
deposit food, etc., on the way to the Pole, and on 10th
February he set out on his first journey with three
men, three sledges, and eighteen dogs.
This first trip upon the Barrier was fuU of exciting
possibihties. Amundsen was without knowledge of
the ground over which he had to travel, and he did not
know whether the dogs would respond to the demands
made upon them, or if his outfit would stand the
severe test to which it was to be put. This was essen-
* The Voyages of Captain Scott (John Murray), page 259.
158 THE LAST SECRETS
tially a trial trip, and the travellers were naturally
anxious that it should be successful. Eighty degrees
South was reached, and in every respect save one
Amundsen was satisfied with his journey. The only
fly in his ointment was that time had been wasted in
preparations before the party was ready to start in
the mornings. But it was only a small fly, and
Amundsen knew that with thought it could easily be
removed. The dogs had responded so splendidly to
the calls made upon them, that perhaps the most
important question of aU had been satisfactorily
answered.
More depot-laying expeditions followed, and before
the winter closed around the explorers, they had
placed three tons of supplies at depots in latitudes
80°, 81°, and 82° S. Amundsen and his men could,
therefore, settle down for their period of waiting with
justifiable hopes that the great spring march to the
Pole would end in triumph.
The winter was spent in paying attention to the
minutest details of equipment, and the inhabitants
of " Framheim " were kept gloriously busy and con-
tented. But with the coming of spring Amundsen
began to be impatient to be up and away on his great
journey. Temperatures, however, remained very low
THE SOUTH POLE 159
— somewhere in the neighbourhood of — 60° F. — and
until they ceased " to grovel in the depths," no start,
could be made.
With the beginning of September the temperatures
began to improve, and Amundsen was determined to
start as soon as he possibly could, arguing that he
could turn round and come back if he found that he
had started too soon. So on 8th September he did
set out, and soon discovered that the dogs could not
endure the intense cold. On the 1 1th the temperature
was - 67.9° F. ; on the following day it was - 61.6° F.,
with a breeze dead against the travellers. On reaching
the 80° S. depot, Amundsen deposited more stores,
and then returned to " Framheim."
More than a month passed before the South Pole
party was able to make another start, and it is of
interest to note that, whereas Amundsen ultimately
got off on 19th October, Scott was unable to start
before 1st November.
The South Pole party which set out from " Fram-
heim " consisted of Amundsen, Hanssen, Wisting,
Hassel, and Bjaaland, and they were accompanied by
fifty-two dogs drawing four sledges. As an illustra-
tion of the dangers that lay between the explorers and
the Pole, it is enough to say that on the first day's
160 THE LAST SECRETS
journey a terrible disaster was only avoided by a few
inches. In the thick weather they had steered too
far to the east, and almost fell into what Amundsen
describes as "a yawning black abyss, large enough
to have swallowed us all, and a httle more."
On the 21st Bjaaland's sledge sank down a crevasse,
and had to be unloaded before it could be brought
again to the surface. Wisting, with the Alpine rope
fastened round him, went down and unloaded the
sledge, and when he came up again and was asked if
he was not glad to be out of such a position, he rephed,
" It was nice and warm down there."
It is true that such events are far from unusual in
the Hves of Polar explorers, but Wisting's answer is
worth quoting, because it is typical of the cheerful
spirit shown by Amundsen's companions during the
whole of the journey. In temperament they were
admirably suited for the task that they had under-
taken.
With a view to landmarks on the return journey,
Amundsen, rightly leaving nothing more to chance
than he could help, decided to build snow-beacons.
The first beacon was built in 80° 23' S., and altogether
160 beacons were erected, six feet in height.
Up to 82° S. the course had already been travelled
THE SOUTH POLE 161
by depot-laying parties, but when, on 6th November,
they left 82° S. behind them, their journey was ab-
solutely into the unknown. At this time they were
marching about 23 miles daily, and at this rate they
advanced a degree in three days.
On reaching 83° S., the explorers deposited pro-
visions for five men and twelve dogs for four days, and
depots were subsequently made at 84° S., and 85° S.
It was from the latter depot that they decided to
make what may, without exaggeration, be called their
dash for the Pole. From their camp at 85° S., the
distance to the Pole and back was 683 miles. After
consideration Amundsen determined to take forward
provisions, etc., for sixty days on the sledges, and
depot the rest of the supplies and outfit.
A weary ascent to the plateau lay before the ex-
plorers, and they started upon it on 17th November.
Three days later they had reached the plateau, but
although they were happy enough in having accom-
plished a long and dangerous cUmb, their first camp
on the plateau was not one of happy memory.
Grim work had to be done. Amundsen arrived on
the plateau with forty-two dogs, but twenty-four of
them had to be killed when the plateau was reached.
It was a sacrifice that had to be made if the success
(2,369) 11
162 THE LAST SECRETS
of the expedition was to be considered ; but no one
can read Amundsen's account of it without recogniz-
ing how bitterly he and his companions regretted
the necessity.
This camp, not without reason, was called " The
Butcher's Shop," and as both the men and dogs re-
quired rest before setting out on the final stages of
their march, it had been decided to remain there for
two days. The eighteen remaining dogs were divided
into three teams, with six dogs in each team, and one
sledge was left behind.
But owing to the weather the explorers could not
leave this hated " Butcher's Shop " until 25th Nov-
ember, and when they did set out again a blizzard
was blowing. So tired, however, were they of waiting
in such an inhospitable and gruesome spot, that all of
them were eager to quit it — whatever the conditions
of the weather might be.
Fog subsequently impeded the party, and again
and again Amundsen blessed the assistance that they
received from ski. " I am not," he wrote, " giving
too much credit to our excellent ski when I say that
they not only played a very important part, but
possibly the most important of all, on our journey to
the South Pole. Many a time we traversed stretches
THE SOUTH POLE 163
of surface so cleft and disturbed that it would have
been an impossibiUty to get over them on foot." *
The 7th December was a great day for the ex-
pedition, because during it they passed Shackleton's
"farthest south," 88° 23' S. They proceeded for
another two miles, and then determined to make their
last depot. So important to them was this depot
that they not only marked it at right angles to their
course, but also by snow beacons at every two miles
to the south.
As the explorers approached the Pole, Amundsen,
very naturally, was beset by nervousness. " Would
he be there first ? " was a question that kept on re-
curring in his mind. There was no cause to worry.
Blessed by fine weather, he and his companions
reached the South Pole on December 14, 1911,
and the five of them together planted the pole
from which the Norwegian flag flew. "Thus we
plant thee, beloved flag, at the South Pole, and give
to the plain on which it lies the name of King
Haakon VII.'s Plateau."
On this day Scott was still struggUng on his great
march to the same destination, which he reached in
the third week of January.
* The South Pole, Vol. II., page 89.
164 THE LAST SECRETS
The calculations that Amundsen carried out at the
South Pole gave its latitude as 89° 56' S.
Amundsen had won the race, and with his victory
had revealed one of the great secrets of the world.
His success had been gained by strenuous labour,
great courage, and infinite care. And if Britons
connect Scott's name inseparably with the South
Pole, and honour it as that of one of their heroes,
they do not for a moment grudge Amundsen the
honour due to him as one of the greatest explorers
of all time. For Amundsen was the first to discover
the South Pole, and no one wishes, or is likely, to
forget it.
The Norwegians reached the Pole with seventeen
dogs, one of which had to be killed there, and they
travelled back with two sledges, a team of eight dogs
in each sledge. On his return journey Amundsen was
fortunate enough to meet with favourable winds and
weather, and the explorers arrived at " Framheim "
on January 25, 1912, having travelled 1,860 miles
in ninety -nine days. It was a glorious achievement,
a great victory over conditions that are scarcely
conceivable to any one unacquainted with the
Antarctic or Arctic regions.
THE SOUTH POLE 165
IV
To pass from Amundsen's expedition to Scott's last
expedition is to turn from one splendid exploit to
another. Scott, as every one knows, was beaten in
the actual race for the South Pole. But he and his
friends reached their goal, and the tale of their struggle
against misfortune after reaching it is one of the finest
and most pathetic in the world.
When Scott's intentions to lead another Antarctic
expedition were known, no less than eight thousand
apphcants volunteered to go with him, and among
this enormous number were several men whose names
will for ever find a place in the history of Polar ex-
ploration.
When the Terra Nova sailed from Lyttelton, New
Zealand, for the Antarctic regions, on November 29,
1910, she carried both ponies and dogs. Three motor-
sledges, one of which was lost in landing, were also
taken, and Scott, with his intense dishke for the
cruelty inseparably connected with the use of animals
for motive power, hoped that these sledges would do
much to save the ponies and dogs. Owing to engine
trouble these hopes were not realized, but in connection
166 THE LAST SECRETS
with them Sir Clements Markham has written :
*' Captain Scott was quite on the right tack, and,
with more experience, his idea of Polar motors will
hereafter be made feasible, a consummation which
was very dear to his heart." *
The Terra Nova was by no means as fortunate as
the Discovery in making her way to the Antarctic.
At the beginning of December she encountered a pro-
longed and terrific storm, and subsequently she had to
fight her passage through some 370 miles of ice. Not
until January 3, 1911, did she reach the Barrier, five
miles east of Cape Crozier. Here Scott had hoped to
make his winter quarters, but owing to the swell
no landing could be made, and on the following day
he decided to land at Cape Evans, 14 miles north of the
Discoveries winter quarters. Strenuous work followed,
and in a few days everything necessary had been
landed from the ship, the house was soon built, and
the explorers were ready to start laying depots in
preparation for the march to the Pole.
On his first depot-laying journey Scott was accom-
panied by eleven men, eight ponies, and twenty-six
dogs. He was more than a Uttle doubtful about the
dogs, but thought his ponies were bound to be a success.
* The Lands of Silence (John Murray), page 490.
THE SOUTH POLE 167
" They work," he wrote, " with such extraordinary
steadiness. . . . The great drawback is the ease with
which they sink into soft snow — they struggle pluckily,
but it is trying to watch them."
This depot-laying party reached latitude 79° 29' S.,
and there left over a ton of stores ; consequently the
name of One Ton Camp was bestowed upon it. On
the return journey disasters happened that seriously
affected the success of the expedition, for six out of
the eight ponies were lost. " Everything out of joint
with the loss of our ponies, but mercifully with all
the party aUve and well," is Scott's comment on this
grave misfortune. Ten ponies still remained.
During the winter Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-
Garrard started on June 27, 1911, upon their famous
journey to Cape Crozier to visit the Emperor penguin
rookery, and they did not return to Cape Evans until
1st August. During these weeks they had to fight
against appalUngly low temperatures. When, for in-
stance, they started from Cape Evans, their three
sleeping-bags weighed 52 lbs., but owing to the ice
that had collected upon them these three bags weighed
118 lbs. when the travellers returned. Scott con-
sidered that no praise was too high for men who would
face such weather during the Polar winter.
168 THE LAST SECRETS
With the beginning of August preparations for the
great march went on apace, but it was not until 1st
November that a start could be made from Cape
Evans. Night-marching was decided upon, and the
order of marching was at first settled by the speed of
the ponies, for some of them were slow, some fairly
fast, and some were " fliers." The motors, with
E. R. Evans, Day, Lashley, and Hooper with them,
had already started, and the dogs, under the control
of Meares and Demetri, were to follow behind the last
detachment of men and ponies. Very soon, however,
the motor-party were in trouble, and this party had
to abandon their machines and push on as a man-
hauling party.
By 15th November Scott reached One Ton Camp,
and fears about the ponies began to take shape. At
Camp 19 the explorers were within 150 miles of the
Beardmore Glacier, but some of the ponies were be-
ginning to fail, and at the next camp the first of them
(" the gallant Jehu ") had to be shot. From this
camp it was arranged that Day and Hooper should
turn back.
At Camp 22 the Middle Barrier depot was made in
latitude 81° 35', and then for some days the march
was impeded by extraordinarily foul weather. Scott's
THE SOUTH POLE 169
desire was to take the ponies as far as the entrance
to the Beardmore Glacier ; but although, on 29th
November, at Camp 5, they were only 70 miles from
what he calls his " pony-goal," some of the willing
animals were very tired.
At Camp 29 six ponies were still left out of the ten
which had started, but although the chances of getting
through successfully to the glacier were good, the
weather still remained as obstructive as possible.
On 5th December a terrific fall of snow added to the
anxieties of the explorers, who found themselves
within 12 miles of the glacier, but hopelessly held up
by such a violent and unexpected storm. It was
natural enough for Scott to be anxious, for on 7th
December the food that he had hoped only to use
after the glacier was reached had to be begun on. Two
days later, however, by marching under terrible con-
ditions, the entrance to the glacier was gained, and
then at Camp 31, which was called Shambles Camp,
the last of the ponies were killed.
On 9th December, Wilson wrote : " Nobby [Wil-
son's special pony] had all my biscuits last night and
this morning, and by the time we camped I was just
ravenously hungry. Thank God the horses are now aU
done with, and we begin the heavy work ourselves."
170 THE LAST SECRETS
At Camp 32 the Lower Glacier depot was built,
and soon afterwards Meares and Demetri, with the
dogs, turned back for home. At this time the parties
were made up of —
Sledge 1. Scott, Wilson, Gates, and P. G. Evans.
Sledge 2. E. Evans, Atkinson, Wright, and Lashley.
Sledge 3. Bowers, Cherry-Garrard, Crean, and Keo-
hane.
But by 21st December, in latitude 85° S., Scott
had to send back four of these men, and Atkinson,
Wright, Cherry-Garrard, and Keohane returned. The
Upper Glacier depot was made, and the returning
men took back a letter from Scott in which he wrote :
" So here we are practically on the summit, and up
to date in the provision Une. We ought to get
through."
On New Year's Day, 1912, the party were within
170 miles of the Pole. Three Degree depot was made.
Then in latitude 87° 32' S., Scott was compelled to
send back E. R. Evans, Crean, and Lashley. When all
of the men were so anxious to go on it was hard to
have to part with any of them ; but questions of food
made it absolutely necessary that some of the party
should return.
The ages of the five men who marched on to the
THE SOUTH POLE 171
Pole were : Scott, forty-three years old ; Wilson,
thirty-nine ; P. O. Evans, thirty-seven ; Oates,
thirty-two ; and Bowers, twenty-eight. Again and
again Scott expressed his admiration of his four
companions : Wilson, " never wavering from start
to finish " ; Evans, " a giant worker " ; Bowers, " a
marvel — he is thoroughly enjoying himself " ; Oates,
" goes hard all the time."
With such men Scott felt confident, in spite of
terrible surfaces, of reaching the Pole. But as he
approached it, fears that Amundsen had already
arrived were constantly besetting him ; and on 16th
January, when within a few miles of the longed-for
goal, there was no longer any doubt that the Nor-
wegian party had won the race. Sledge and ski tracks
and the traces of dogs were all too evident.
Faced by such a grievous blow, not one of Scott's
party could sleep that night, but on the day follow-
ing they marched on some 14 miles and reached
the Pole. " The Pole," Scott wrote, " yes, but under
very different circumstances from those expected."
It is impossible to conceive a greater blow, and when
it is remembered that Scott and his four companions
were already fatigued — if not completely exhausted —
by their tremendous labours, it is easy to realize how
172 THE LAST SECRETS
heavily the disappointment hung on their minds.
Nevertheless they had set out to reach the Pole, and
they had reached it. All honour is due to them ; and
the fact that Amundsen had preceded them in no way
diminished the glory of their achievement.
The altitude of the Pole, as estimated by Scott, is
about 9,500 feet. A cairn was built, and the Union
Jack hoisted. And then on Thursday, 18th January,
they turned their backs upon their goal, and began the
long march that separated them from Cape Evans.
Anxiety about food began at once — not until Three
Degree depot was reached could it be lessened ; and
very soon anxiety at Evans's condition was added to
the danger of the scarcity of food.
On Wednesday, 31st January, the weary travellers
reached the Three Degree depot, but by this time
Evans had dislodged two finger-nails, and his general
condition was very bad. Their next objective was
the Upper Glacier depot, and on Monday night, 6th
February, they were within from 25 to 30 miles of it ;
but so critical had the health of Evans become that
Scott was desperately eager to get off the plateau.
" Things," he wrote, " may mend for him [Evans]
on the glacier, and his wounds get some respite under
warmer conditions."
THE SOUTH POLE 173
On the evening of 7th February they reached the
Upper Glacier depot, and then, after turning aside to
collect geological specimens (which proved to be most
valuable), they met with terrible surfaces and weather.
On 14th February, with 30 miles still to go before the
Lower Glacier depot was reached, Scott's anxiety
about the condition of the party was acute. Indeed,
poor Evans had almost reached the Umit of human
endurance, and during the night of 17th February he
became unconscious, and died quietly at 12.30 a.m.
It was a terrible experience for men, already
supremely fatigued both in mind and body, to meet,
and it was a sorrowful party which, on Sunday after-
noon, arrived at Shambles Camp. There horse meat
in plenty awaited them, and this gave them the
renewal of strength that was sadly needed. For the
moment the prospects of the explorers looked a little
more hopeful, but from this point of their march they
began to suffer from a lack of oil. When, at length,
they succeeded in arriving at the Middle Barrier depot,
on 2nd March, they found so Httle oil that it was
scarcely enough, however economically used, to carry
them on to the next depot, which was 71 miles distant.
Another irretrievable disaster was the fact that Oates's
feet were very badly frost-bitten. On 4th March, Scott
174 THE LAST SECRETS
wrote : "I don't know what I should do if Wilson
and Bowers weren't so determinedly cheerful over
things." And in all truth the position had become
desperate. On the 7th, when stiU 16 miles short of
Mount Hooper depot, Gates, though wonderfully
brave, was in terrible pain. During the next day
they arrived at Mount Hooper, but the shortage of
oil was not relieved.
Over 70 miles separated the exhausted travellers
from One Ton Camp, and they struggled onwards
with death staring them ever nearer and nearer in the
face. With no helping wind, and bad surfaces, they
could not advance more than six miles a day, and on
the night of the 11th, Scott reckoned up the situation
in these words : " We have seven days' food, and
should be about 65 miles from One Ton Camp to-night ;
6x7 = 42, leaving us 13 miles short of our distance,
even if things get no worse."
Unhappily, instead of any improvement in the
situation, misfortunes became more and more plentiful.
It was obvious that Oates was near the end, and on
the morning of the 15th or 16th, when the blizzard
was blowing, he walked out of the tent. " I am just
going outside, and may be some time," were the last
words he spoke to his companions in distress. " We
THE SOUTH POLE 175
knew," said Scott, who still continued to write his
journal, " that poor Oates was walking to his death
... it was the act of a brave man and an Enghsh
gentleman."
Oates sacrificed himself in the hope of helping the
others, and no brave man ever performed a braver act.
But his sacrifice was of no avail. Fortune had de-
clared too strong a hand against the explorers for
them to be able to resist it.
By midday on 18th March, Scott, Wilson, and
Bowers had struggled on to within 21 miles of One
Ton depot, and during the afternoon of the following
day they managed to advance another 10 miles. And
then they made what was destined to be their last
camp. The men themselves were in a pitiable con-
dition, and bhzzard following blizzard, they were
utterly unable to march a step farther.
On 29th March, Scott wrote: "Since the 21st we
have had a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W.
We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece, and bare
food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have
been ready to start for our depot, eleven miles away,
but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of
whirling drift. . . . We shall stick it out to the end,
but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end
176 THE LAST SECRETS
cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I
can write more." And then follows those pathetic
words : " Last entry. For God's sake, look after our
people."
It was not until 30th October that Atkinson, on
whom the leadership of the expedition had fallen,
was able to take out a search party. And nearly a
fortnight later the bodies of these three friends and
explorers were found.
No more fitting words could be found with which
to conclude this chapter of great deeds than those
which were left in the metal cylinder on the grave of
these heroes : —
"November 12, 1912, latitude 79° 60' S. This
cross and cairn are erected over the bodies of Captain
Scott, C.V.O., R.N. ; Doctor E. A. Wilson, M.B.,
B.C. (Cantab.) ; and Lieutenant H. R. Bowers, Royal
Indian Marine. A sUght token to perpetuate their
successful and gallant attempt to reach the Pole.
This they did on January 17, 1912, after the Nor-
wegian expedition had already done so. Inclement
weather, with lack of fuel, was the cause of their
death. Also to commemorate their two gallant com-
rades. Captain L. E. G. Gates, of the Inniskilling
THE SOUTH POLE 177
Dragoons, who walked to his death in a blizzard to
save his comrades, about 18 miles south of this posi-
tion ; also of Seaman Edgar Evans, who died at the
foot of the Beardmore Glacier.
" The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away ;
blessed be the name of the Lord."
(8.809) ' i^l 13
VI
MOUNT McKINLEY
i»
MOUNT McKINLEY
(Map, p. 184.)
The ascent of Ruwenzori unriddled the mystery of
equatorial snows. There now remained the question
of great peaks in the extreme North, where the moun-
taineering problems must obviously be very different
from those found at a similar altitude in the temperate
zones. Something had been done to solve the prob-
lem by the ascent of Mount St. Elias, in Alaska, on
July 31, 1897. But Mount St. EUas was only just
over 18,000 feet, and it was peculiarly accessible, for
it lies close to the coast, on the borders of British and
American territory. The eyes of explorers began to
turn towards Mount McKinley, the highest peak in
North America, which reached a height of 20,300 feet.
Its latitude was 63° N., and so within 250 miles of
the Arctic Circle. The nearest salt water, Cook Inlet,
was 140 miles from the southern face as the crow flies.
It was therefore almost unreachable, Ijdng as it did
in the midst of an unexplored wilderness and sur-
rounded by a mighty glacier system.
181
182 THE LAST SECRETS
On the south these glaciers were drained by the
Susitna River, with its tributaries the Yentna and the
Chulitna, and on its northern face by the affluents
of the Yukon. If the traveller attempted to reach
it in summer he might find a difficult waterway up
to the beginning of the glaciers, but then he had thirty
miles of ice to cross before he reached the base, and
over these he must transport everything on his back.
In winter the journey might be made by dogs, but
winter in those latitudes was scarcely the time to
travel. Moreover, Mount McKinley, unlike the other
great peaks in the world, rose from a low elevation.
In the case of the South American and Himalayan
peaks climbing does not begin until an altitude of at
least 10,000 feet has been reached, and their line of
perpetual snow is very high. It is possible, for example,
to cover the 22,860 feet of Aconcagua without ever
touching snow. But in Mount McKinley the snow-
line was not much more than 2,500 feet, and there
was something like 15,000 feet of climbing. Again,
its position so far north did not permit the snows to
melt properly in the summer, or to grow' hard and
pack. Its snowfall was so great that the snow never
got into the condition which eases the path of the
mountaineer. Finally — and this appUed especially to a
MOUNT McKINLEY 183
winter journey — it was situated in a land of desperate
storms. The severest weather conditions ever recorded
by the American Meteorological Bureau occurred at
Mount Washington, which is only 6,000 feet above the
sea, where the temperature was 40 degrees below zero
and the wind 180 miles an hour. What might the
chmber expect 20,000 feet up in the sky, with nothing
between him and the North Pole ?
The attempt on Mount McKinley, therefore, was
not a thing to be lightly undertaken. It meant a
journey to the remote Alaskan coast, and then some
200 miles through difficult and little known country
before even the base was reached. What the climbing
would be Hke no one could tell. The obvious route,
as the map will show, was the Susitna River, by which,
indeed, its first explorer, a young Princeton graduate
called Dickey, had approached it in 1896. It was he
who christened it Mount McKinley. He fell into an
argument with another prospector who was a rabid
champion of free silver, and after many weary days'
dispute retaliated by naming the mountain after the
champion of the gold standard. In 1903 an expedition,
led by the too famous Dr. Cook, reached the base from
the north, but failed to do any climbing. Then, in
1906, began the explorations of Professor Parker and
184 THE LAST SECRETS
Mr. Belmore Browne, who were destined six years
later to be the conquerors of the peak.
The 1906 expedition may be roughly sketched, for,
though it was a failure, it at least taught its leaders
what routes were not possible. They started with
pack-horses and a motor-boat, with the intention of
trying the north-western face. They ascended the
Yentna River, which enters the Susitna from the
west, but found it impossible to cross the southern
flanks of the Alaskan range. They then turned up
the south side of the range, and reached the glacier
out of which the Tokositna River flows. By this time
their transport was in a precarious condition, and
their horses could go no farther. They were within
view of Mount McKinley, and saw not only the im-
possibility of the southern face, but the extraordinary
difficulties of approaching even its base from that
direction. They accordingly returned to the coast,
where Dr. Cook left them, announcing that he
intended to make one final desperate attempt on
the mountain.
Presently Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne
10 20
1 1
30 40 5p
^ JCamp at summit of the pass
''■ >^-\over the Range,Apr.3,1912,
|G lacier City
The Approach.
Mount McKinley.
.SLtBI.e.noA.asnKS -
XiiOi^
^
I -iJiM L ..-1-, ...-I I
•■^ali
MOUNT McKINLEY 186
heard, to their surprise, the rumour that Dr. Cook had
succeeded. Knowing that the feat was impossible
in so short a time, they disbelieved the tale, and
stated their views pubUcly in New York. Then
appeared Dr. Cook's notorious book ; but before it
was published he had departed for the Arctic
regions. Geographical circles in America were torn
with the controversy. A committee of the Explorers'
Club investigated the question, but Dr. Cook refused
to give evidence. Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore
Browne were meantime busy with their own plans
for another attempt.
The 1910 expedition was again directed to the
southern face. Their reasons were that for most of
the journey to that face a water route was possible,
and that if they failed there they beUeved they would
be able to go on to the southern North-East ridge,
which, from what they had heard and seen, they be-
heved to be the most promising avenue of attack.
They also wished to duplicate the photographs which
Dr. Cook had published, and so prove or disprove
his bona fides. Also, the northern side of the great
mountain had been already fairly well mapped, but
nothing had been done on the south side.
The notion of a pack train was discarded, and all
186 THE LAST SECRETS
their energies were directed towards designing the
right kind of boat in which to ascend the Susitna and
its tributary the Chuhtna till they reached the glaciers.
The party consisted of eight, including a young man
from Seattle, Mr. Merl La Voy, who was exceptionally
fitted by Providence for the work of a pioneer. The
present writer had many deahngs with Mr. La Voy
during the Great War, and can confidently say that
he never met any one more intrepid, audacious, and
resourceful.
It was a summer-time expedition, and the party
left Susitna station on the 26th May. The ascent
of the two rivers was difficult and exciting enough,
but they reached without misadventure the foot of
the Tokositna tributary, where they established their
base camp. This camp was thirty -seven and a half
miles from Mount McKinley, and a few miles away
was the terminal moraine of a great glacier, which
they hoped would give them a roadway to the moun-
tain. Up that glacier they would have to carry all
their belongings on their backs. In Mr. Belmore
Browne's narrative there is an interesting passage
describing the process by which men are hardened
to wilderness work.
" The day's work consisted in travelling through
MOUNT McKINLEY 187
brush, soft sand, swamps, and glacier streams for
about ten hours. With the exception of one or two
men, who put a biscuit in their pockets, we took no
food with us. The day's work was in no way difficult,
for we carried (during the prehminary reconnaissance)
no loads ; our condition from the civilized standpoint
was splendid ; we were well-fed, sun-browned, and
fairly hard — and yet we all came into camp thoroughly
tired out. Two months after our adventures on Mount
McKinley's ice flanks we came down through the
same stretch of country. The snow, however, had
melted, leaving dense thickets through which we had
to chop our way ; mosquitoes hung in clouds, and
four of us . . . were carrjdng packs running from
95 to 120 lbs. From the civihzed standpoint we were
not well-fed and we did not look well — our eyes and
cheeks were sunken and our bodies were worn down
to bone and sinew ; and yet we came into camp as
fresh and happy as children, and after a bite to eat
and a smoke we could have gone on cheerfully."
It was no light task carrying an outfit of 1,200 lbs.
over the thirty-seven and a half miles of glacier, a
distance which by the actual route used was much
farther. Most of the weight was in pemmican and
alcohol for the stoves. The pemmican consisted of
188 THE LAST SECRETS
pulverized raw meat, mixed with sugar, raisins, cur-
rants, and tallow. Their principal drink was tea. On
11th June they had their last wood fire, and after that
there was only the stove. The days were spent in
sheer hard navvy labour, trudging along on snow-shoes
under heavy packs, and trotting back for others. They
had various misadventures. Frequent bhzzards of
wind and snow compelled them to shut up their tent
fast at night, with the result that on one occasion they
were nearly asphyxiated.
On 27th June they reached the head of the main
glacier, beyond which, through a narrow gorge, a
secondary glacier descended from the mountains,
Another glacier came down on their right, and here
they achieved an interesting piece of detective work.
At the top of it they saw some peaks which recalled
an illustration in Dr. Cook's book. The illustration
purported to be the summit of Mount McKinley, and
showed on the left a rock shoulder which Dr. Cook
described as a cliff of 8,000 feet. It was really a faked
picture of the small peaks at the head of this glacier,
miles and miles from the main mountain, and the
cliff of 8,000 feet turned out only to rise 300 feet above
the floor, and to be only 5,300 feet above sea-level.
One legend at any rate had been dispelled for ever.
MOUNT McKINLEY 189
Now began the patient relajdng of provisions up the
great gorge. It was desperately hard manual labour,
their faces were burnt black by the glare of the sun,
and every now and then there would be a slip into a
crevasse, which only the highest good fortune saved
from being a tragedy. After thirty-six days of hard
travelling, they were at last within two miles of the
base of the southern cliffs of Mount McKinley. They
found themselves in a great ice basin, hemmed in by
colossal precipices down which avalanches thundered.
Before them rose the mountain, 15,000 feet of rock
and ice. Their glasses showed them that the South-
West ridge became utterly unclimbable after an
altitude of about 15,000 feet. The southern North-
East ridge looked more promising, and to this they
turned their attention. In that Northern summer
there was no dark. " The advance and retreat of
the night shadows went on with scarcely a pause,
and sometimes we would be uncertain whether the
Alpine glow on the big mountain's icy crest was the
light of the rising or the setting sun." They had now
a short spell of rest from their toil ; and as the mind of
man on such occasions turns to food, they invented
out of their scanty larder a new pudding. Here is
the recipe.
190 THE LAST SECRETS
" First soak three broken hard-tack in snow-water
until they are soft. Add 60 raisins and pemmican
the size of 4 J eggs. Stir slowly but energetically until
the mess is thoroughly amalgamated. Boil slowly
over an alcohol stove, add three tablespoonfuls of
granulated sugar, and serve in a granite-ware cup."
But between them and the North-East ridge lay
a gigantic serac. For a day and a half they lay
storm-bound under it, and then, on the morning of
11th July, tried to cut their way up the ice wall. It
proved most difficult and dangerous work, and pres-
ently, owing to the diminishing provisions, they
realized it was impossible. Again and again they
attempted it, for only that way was there a road to
the North-East ridges. But at last they had to
give it up as hopeless, and turn their attention to the
South-West arete.
This, too, proved too hard for them. They laboured
on under constant ice-falls and avalanches, and reached
a height of 10,300 feet, where they had perforce to
halt. During these days they saw some marvellous
mountain scenery. " The whole of the great cUffs
of the box-canon appeared at first glance to be on
fire. Unnumbered thousands of tons of soft snow
were avalanching from the southern flanks of Mount
MOUNT McKINLEY 191
McKinley on to the glacier floor 5,000 feet below.
The snow fell so far that it was broken into heavy
clouds that rolled downward like heavy waves. The
force of the rolling mass was terrific, and as it struck
the blue-green glacier mail it threw a great snow cloud
that raced Uke a live thing for 500 feet ; whirling in
the wind the avalanche had caused, the white wall
swept across the valley, and almost before we were
aware of it we were struggling and choking in a blind-
ing and stinging cloud of ice dust."
They began their retreat, and their return to greenery
and summer out of a hjrperborean hell was like a man's
recovery from a dangerous iUness. Though the expe-
dition failed, they were a merry party, for though every
man was sunken-eyed and lean and hatchet-faced, he
was in the pink of condition. It was nothing to them
to carry a load of 120 lbs,, which would have broken
their backs in the first days. The party included men
of diverse temperaments and multifarious attainments,
and Mr. La Voy observed, " It is an education to travel
with a bunch like ours ; if anything should happen
you can listen to a whole dictionary." In the end
they came to their cache on the Chulitna, and they
emptied it as children empty their Christmas stockings.
" We were actually ravenous," says Mr. Belmore
192 THE LAST SECRETS
Browne, *' and as jars of chow-chow, cans of maple-
syrup, and tins of meat appeared we hugged them in
our arms and danced delirious dances on the sand !
One of the great truths of hfe that one learns to under-
stand in the North is that it is well worth while to
go without the things one wants, for the greater the
sacrifice the greater the reward when the wish is con-
summated. I have eaten with all manner of hungry
men, from the sun-browned riders of the sage to the
bidarka-men of the Aleutians, and I have feasted
joyously on ' seal-liver,' ' seagull-omelets,' and ' caribou
spinach ' ; but never have I seen men eat more, or
better food ! "
II
As soon as the explorers returned to civiUzation
they began to plan a third attempt. It was clear to
them that the western and southern faces of the moun-
tain were impracticable, and that their best chance
was on the North-East ridge. This, however, could
not be approached from the south ; so it became their
object to get in on the north side. Their explorations
in 1910 had proved the difficulties of a summer trip,
for loads had to be transported on men's backs over
many miles of glacier. They therefore decided to
Mount McKinley : View of the Southern Approach.
(From the painting by Mr. Behnore Browne. By permission of Messrs. Putnam's Son$,)
MOUNT Mckinley 193
make a winter expedition of it and to use Alaskan
dog teams. The best route seemed to be up the
Susitna and Chulitna rivers, and they hoped some-
where near the head of the Chulitna to find a pass
in the Alaskan range which would take them round
the north face of Mount McKinley.
In October, 1911, Mr. La Voy began to relay sup-
plies up the Chuhtna, the plan being for him to join
Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne at Susitna
in February of 1912. As Cook Inlet is choked by ice
during winter the travellers had to leave the steamer
at Seward, and make a long and difficult overland
journey by way of Glacier City and the Knik fjord to
the Susitna River. There they found Mr. La Voy with
the dog teams. He reported that he had taken the
bulk of the outfit to a cache on the Chulitna, several
miles beyond the mouth of the Tokositna.
The journey up the Susitna, which was now a flat
snow trail, went easily and pleasantly. When they
reached the cache they found to their disgust that a
wolverine, which is the arch-fiend of those northern
wildernesses, had managed to break in, though it
was placed for greater security on a platform
of logs among the trees. The brute had destroyed
a good deal of the dog-feed and bacon, and a new
(2,369) 13
194 THE LAST SECRETS
and expensive camera of Mr. La Voy's, which had
been swung on the top of a 30-foot pole. The
wolverine had climbed the pole, cut oflE the corners
of the leather case, and gnawed its way into the
camera !
From the cache began a long system of relays, for
it was impossible to carry all the equipment in one
journey. There was now no trail, and a road had to
be " broken " before each stage. The route lay up
the Chulitna, and the travellers hoped to find some
large stream coming down on their left which would
indicate a gap in the Alaskan range. Any such gap
would, of course, be filled with glaciers, the water
from which must form a river. On the whole, winter
traveUing compared favourably with summer. The
men used snow-shoes to break the trail, and after
equipment had been transported for five miles, returned
on the empty sleds for new loads. Winter had not
killed all signs of wild hfe, though hunting was difficult,
and the snow was dotted with the tracks of innumerable
wild tilings. Even a finch was heard singing. Camp-
ing was perfectly comfortable, and in a tent with the
stove lit and beds of green spruce prepared, the nights
were warm and peaceful.
At last, as the trees began to thin, they came to a
MOUNT McKINLEY 196
point where the valley split and a great canon turned
north towards the range. Travel now became rougher,
for the broad level flats gave way to snow-covered
rapids and big drifts. As they advanced up the gorge
a glacier was seen winding down from the centre of
the mountains. One night Mr. Belmore Browne had
an accident which might have proved serious. He
went out to shoot an owl for food, and as the ejector
of his Httle rifle had been removed the cartridge came
back on his eye and just missed his right eyeball. It
gave him an eerie feeling to see the friendly dogs lap-
ping up the bloodstained snow. Shortly after he
made a reconnaissance of twenty-five miles ahead, and
found the glacier they had seen from afar off running
like a great white road into the hills. The route
seemed possible, but there were ugly ice precipices at
the head which suggested that the crossing of the pass
might not be easy.
A second reconnaissance took him to the head of
the glacier. At first no crossing could be discerned,
but suddenly at the head of the right-hand basin the
mountains broke away and he saw a smooth snow-
field leading to the crest. He climbed to the top of
it, and at first saw nothing but a sheer precipice. At
length, however, he discovered on the right a gentle
196 THE LAST SECRETS
snow slope leading down into a great snow cup, and
realized that the pass could be crossed.
On 3rd April the main camp was pushed up to a
height of 6,000 feet. Then came a delay from a bliz-
zard, which confined the explorers for twenty-four
hours to their tents. It was bitterly cold, and every-
thing, including the alarm clock, froze stiff. They
managed, however, to get a Uttle fire with an empty
pemmican case, and, with the stove, had a sort of
party in the tent — men, dogs, and everything. The
party was, however, unceremoniously broken up by
one of the dogs backing into the stove, and filling the
tent with a cloud of smoke from singed hair.
Next morning they crossed the divide, partly shoot-
ing and partly lowering their belongings over the
1,000-feet drop into the hollow. They were no sooner
across when another bhzzard arrived, and they were
storm-bound for thirty-six hours. But their spirits
were high. For the time they were done with uphill
climbs, and they saw that by crossing a low pass at
the head of another glacier they could reach the great
Muldrow Glacier, which had been known to the world
since 1902. This glacier would take them into the
very heart of the mountain.
Without much diflficulty they crossed the pass, and,
MOUNT McKINLEY 197
descending to the Muldrow moraine, they realized
with joy that they were on the northern side of the
Alaskan range. It was now nearly the middle of
April, and they found themselves in the kind of country
that hunters dream of. There was a chance of
fresh meat, and, to men who had been seventeen days
on the ice, the hope of a change in their menu and the
sight of vegetation were an intoxication, Mr. Belmore
Browne went out one morning, and fell in with a herd of
white sheep {Ovis Dalli). He secured three, and that
night the camp feasted. " In cold weather," he writes,
" one has a craving for fat, and in the wilderness one
is less particular about the way meat is cooked. Our
desire for fat was so intense that we tried eating the
raw meat, and finding it good beyond words, we ate
freely of the fresh mutton. I can easily understand
now why savage tribes make a practice of eating
uncooked flesh." The white sheep was not the only
game. There was a special variety of caribou ; there
was the Alaskan moose ; there was an occasional
grizzly ; and there were quantities of ptarmigan. The
travellers showed the most sportsmanlike spirit in
refraining from killing females or immature beasts.
From the Muldrow Glacier they turned westward and
struck the McKinley fork of the Kantishna River,
198 THE LAST SECRETS
which flows to the Yukon. Presently they were in
timber country, and realized that they had crossed
the Alaskan range " from wood to wood," and inci-
dentally had added two new glacier systems to the
map. After snow and ice and pemmican they had
greenery and fresh meat, and, as they worked their
way to the lowlands, the fi.rst flush of spring. Above
all, they had the North-East ridges (of which there
were three) above them to offer an apparently possible
route to the summit. They saw a glacier running
between the central and northern North-East ridges
which they decided would be their road. Mr. Belmore
Browne went out to prospect, and, climbing the
head of a valley, found himself looking down upon
the upper Muldrow Glacier, which he now reahzed
was split in two by the central North-East ridge.
He saw also that the northern branch of it gave a
road to the very base of the central peak.
A base camp was established on 24tb April, and
four days later began the chief reconnaissance. They
took with them a dog team, and, for equipment,
their mountain tent, instruments, alcohol lamps, and
provisions of pemmican, chocolate, hard-tack, sugar,
and raisins. The total outfit weighed about 600 lbs.
They started at night, when the snow was in better
MOUNT McKINLEY 199
condition, and found the northern branch of the Mul-
drow, which they called the McKinley Glacier, rising
in steps like a huge staircase. Camp was pitched at
the base of a serac between two great cliffs of solid
blue ice.
On 3rd May they reached the top of the serac at an
altitude of 8,500 feet, after a very difficult journey.
Mr. La Voy, who was leading, fell into a crevasse, and
the strain on the rope pulled Mr. Belmore Browne to
the very edge. Mr. La Voy, however, stuck on a ledge
of ice, which eased the strain ; without that ledge it
may well be that the whole expedition would have
ended in tragedy. Bit by bit they fought their way
to the head of the glacier, suffering severely from the
glare of the sun, though the temperature was only
one degree above freezing. They had now attained
an altitude of 11,000 feet, and saw a low col on the
mountain ridge, where they decided to make a high
camp. This would be about 12,000 feet high, which
would leave them between 3,000 and 5,000 more feet
to climb before they reached the basin between the
north and south peaks. It was now time to send the
dogs home; so, after caching their equipment, they
started back for the base camp, which they reached
on the evening of 8th May.
200 THE LAST SECRETS
Some pleasant days were spent at the base camp.
When they left it the countryside had still been in the
grip of winter, but now everywhere there were grass and
flowers and running streams. So far they had managed
well. They had crossed the Alaskan range early enough
to find the snow in good condition for dog sledding,
and they had cached 300 lbs. weight of mountain
provisions at 11,000 feet. They could therefore afford
to wait till the days lengthened before venturing on
a final climb. Here is Mr. Belmore Browne's picture
of the landscape : —
" The mountain country at the northern base of
Mount McKinley is the most beautiful stretch of wilder-
ness that I have ever seen, and I will never forget
those wonderful days when I followed up the velvety
valleys or clambered among the high rocky peaks as
my fancy led me. In the late evening I have trotted
downward through valleys that were so beautiful that
I was forced against my will to lie down in the soft
grass and drink in the wild beauty of the spot, although
I knew that I would be late for supper, and that the
stove would be cold. The mountains were bare of
vegetation, with the exception of velvety carpets of
green grass that swept downward from the snow-
fields ; in the centres of the cup-shaped hollows ran
« s
S S
3 s>
S 2
S S
CO -^
Si
MOUNT McKINLEY 201
streams of crystal-clear water ; as the sun sank lower
and lower the hills would turn a darker blue, until the
cold, clean air from the snow-fields would remind you
that night was come and that camp was far away."
The sight of big avalanches on Mount McKinley
warned the explorers that great risks had to be faced.
On the 5th day of June they started out for their final
attack. Unfortunately the weather became very
bad, and soon they were enveloped in a heavy snow-
storm. Mr. La Voy had hurt his knee hunting, and
the ascent through the seracs was for him very arduous.
The nervous strain, too, was great, for they had to be
perpetually on the outlook for avalanches. They
feared that one might have buried their cache, and it
was an immense relief when they reached the 11,000-
feet point and saw the top of their sled sticking out
of the snow.
They now moved their supplies up to a camp on
the col of the ridge at a height of 11,800 feet. On
19th June they made a reconnaissance, taking with
them food for six days, and intending to chmb up to
the big basin between the two main peaks. They
reached a height of 13,200 feet up a sensational arete,
when Mr. La Voy's knee gave out and they were com-
pelled to return. Three days later they made a camp
202 THE LAST SECRETS
on the ridge at 13,600 feet. It was a wild and most
laborious journey, with a drop of 6,000 feet on the left
and of 2,000 on the right. It would take them two
hours of hard work to make 500 feet. Apart from the
handicap of Mr. La Voy's knee, Mr. Belmore Browne's
eyes were very bad. They now realized that they
could not reach the summit with their food supply
of six days' rations, and they were forced to change
their plans, and go back for more food.
They returned to the camp on the col and packed
up ten days' rations. With tremendous difficulty
they transported them up to a 16,000-feet camp on
the ridge, where they were on the edge of the big
glacier-filled basin between the two summits. All
three found their health beginning to suffer. The
pemmican proved to be impossible food, giving them
aU violent stomach pains, and they were forced to
confine themselves to tea and hard- tack. The cold
was intense, and inside the tent, with the alcohol stove
burning and the warmth of three bodies, the tempera-
ture at 7.30 p.m. was five degrees below zero, and
three hours later nineteen degrees below zero. " Despite
elaborate precautions," says Mr. Belmore Browne, " I
can say in aU honesty that I did not have a single
night's normal sleep above 15,000 feet on account of
MOUNT McKINLEY 203
the cold." By this time their appearance was, as
Mr. La Voy said, " sufficient to frighten children into
the straight and narrow path." All were more or
less snow-blind, burnt black, unshaven, with lips,
noses, and hands swollen, cracked, and bleeding.
On 27th June the packs were carried in relays to
just under the last serac, which was the highest point
in the big basin. The altitude was 16,615 feet. Their
one comfort was that a snow-field seemed to lead easily
up to the sky-line of the central North-East ridge,
and that from there they saw what appeared to be a
reasonable gradient to the final summit. On 28th
June they rested and prepared for their last effort.
They were now convinced that nothing could stop
them except storm. The night was fine, and the weather
promised well for the morrow. The summit appeared
to them to be nearly flat with a slight hummocky rise,
which must be the highest point in North America.
On 29th June they left camp at 6 a.m., moving very
quietly and steadily and conserving their strength.
Mr. La Voy and Mr. Belmore Browne led alternately.
Slowly they made their way up the snow slopes at the
rate of about 400 feet an hour. At 18,500 feet they
stopped and congratulated each other, for they had
beaten the Duke of the Abruzzi's record on Mount
204 THE LAST SECRETS
St. Elias. Presently they were on the sky-Hne of the
ridge, and looking down on the arena where they had
struggled two years before. Now, for the first time,
came a threat from the weather. The sky was clear
to the north, but from the south a great sea of clouds
rolled against the mountain like surf on a shore.
As they moved up the ridge breathing became more
difficult. At 19,000 feet they had passed the last
rock, and were looking at the summit. It rose as
innocently as a snow-covered tennis court, but now
the wind was rising and the southern sky darkening,
and just at the base of the last lift the gale broke. In
a fierce scurry of snow they crawled up the round dome,
Mr. La Voy leading and hacking steps. Then came
Mr. Belmore Browne's turn, and he realized that his
hands were freezing, and that the bitter wind was
cutting through his flesh. He dare not get dry mittens
from his rucksack lest his hands should be frozen
during the change. When his second turn was three-
fourths finished. Professor Parker's barometer registered
20,000 feet, and they were within 300 feet of the top.
The rest was an evil dream. To each man the other
two seemed to be lost in the ice mist, and the cold
was freezing their marrow. The storm was growing
fiercer, and as they topped a little rise its full fury
MOUNT McKINLEY 205
burst upon them. The story must be given in Mr.
Belmore Browne's own words : —
" The breath was driven from my body, and I held
to my axe with stooped shoulders to stand against the
gale ; I could not go ahead. As I brushed the frost from
my glasses and squinted upward through the stinging
snow I saw a sight that will haunt me to my dying day.
The, slope ohove me was no longer steep ! That was all I
could see. What it meant I will never know for cer-
tain — aU I can say is that we were close to the top ! "
There was no going on in the teeth of that gale.
The three chopped a seat in the ice, trying to find a
shelter ; but they were not huddled there a second
before they discovered they were freezing. There was
nothing for it but to return, for the snow was obliterat-
ing their back trail. Dead tired and sick at heart
they began the journey back, and found that the steps
they had cut had disappeared. It took them nearly
two hours to go down an easy slope of 1,000 feet.
They reached the base of the dome, guiding them-
selves only by the direction of the wind, and at last
at 7.35 p.m. crawled into their upper camp. All their
apparel down to their underclothes was filled with
ice. They were beaten by the wind, and by the wind
only. On a conservative estimate its pace was fifty-
206 THE LAST SECRETS
five miles an hour, and the temperature fifteen degrees
below zero. Otherwise they suffered little from the
altitude. Mr. Belmore Browne was able to roll and
smoke a cigarette between 18,000 and 19,000 feet.
They spent a day in their tent, trying to thaw their
clothes. Pemmican they could not touch, their choco-
late was finished, and their food was tea, sugar, hard-
tack, and raisins. It was a cruel fate that they had
lost ten days' rations in useless pemmican since leaving
their 13,200-feet camp, and they had not only lost the
food but carried useless weight.
They made one more attempt on the summit, and
reached the base of the final dome ; but there another
storm assailed them, and, after waiting an hour, they
went back. There was now a real risk of being caught
with insufficient food in a blizzard which would destroy
life, and they made haste down the mountain. They
had spent seven days above 15,000 feet, six days
above 16,000 feet, and four days above 16,650 feet.
As they descended their health improved, and at last
they came off the glacier on to the moraine, and lay
down on the bare earth. It was the first time for
thirty days that they had lain on anything but snow
and ice. They slept like logs till the afternoon, and
when they awoke a warm wind was blowing up the
MOUNT McKINLEY 207
pass, carrying with it the smell of grass and flowers.
" Never can I forget," says Mr. Belmore Browne,
" the flood of emotions that swept over me. Pro-
fessor Parker and La Voy were equally affected by
this first smell of the lowlands, and we were wet-eyed
and chattered like children as we prepared our packs
for the last stage of our journey."
How dangerous was the climatic condition of the
mountain may be judged from what happened on the
evening of 6th July. From their camp in the foot-
hills they saw the sky suddenly turn a sickly green.
There came a deep rumbling from the Alaskan range,
and as they looked the mountains melted into mist
and the earth began to heave and roll. In front of
them a boulder weighing 200 lbs. broke loose from
the earth and moved. The surface of the hills seemed
to open and the cracks to spout liquid mud. The
whole range was wrapped in dust, and as it cleared
they saw the peaks spouting avalanches. Had this
earthquake overtaken them on the high ground all
must have perished.
Ill
The story has always seemed to me one of the
boldest and most patient adventures in the history of
208 THE LAST SECRETS
mountaineering. Slowly the travellers fought their
way to the discovery of the only practical route.
Mount McKinley was conquered, though they had
failed to cover the hundred or so feet which would
have given them the actual summit. They had blazed
the path to the top and solved its mysteries. Only
that maleficent blizzard at the last moment robbed
them of the full fruit of six years' pioneering.
Next year the actual summit was reached. The
late Dr. Hudson Stuck, the Archdeacon of the Yukon,
ever since he came to the country nine years before,
had contemplated an attempt on the mountain. In
the autumn of 1912 he sent on supphes by way of the
Kantishna River to a point fifty miles from the base.
In March, 1913, he and Mr. W. P. Karstens set out to
reach the peak from the north. At their base camp,
4,000 feet up, they made a fresh supply of caribou
pemmican which proved more satisfactory than that
used by Professor Parker and Mr. Belmore Browne.
The road taken was the same as that of their prede-
cessors — up the Muldrow Glacier and then up the
central North-East ridge. They found that the earth-
quake of 1912 had completely changed the character
of that ridge, and instead of being a reasonable
snow gradient, it had become a confused mass of rock
MOUNT McKINLEY 209
and ice, most difficult to surmount. Bit by bit they
forced their way up it till they reached the upper basin,
and then, being favoured with clear, bright, still
weather, they managed to attain the highest point,
the southern summit. There had been a story of two
miners, called McGonogall and Anderson, who had
reached the top in 1910. Dr. Stuck discovered that
the top they had reached was the lesser northern peak,
for he saw the remains of their flagstafE.
With this ascent the story of the conquest of Mount
McKinley is complete.*
* Dr. Stuck argued with much reason that the present name of
the mountain is unsuitable, and that the Indian name " Denali " —
which means " the Great One " — should be restored. It is to be feared
that the suggestion comes too late in the day. Ever since the expe-
dition of 1906 Mount McKinley has become too familiar a name in the
Western Hemisphere to be readily changed for another. The story
of the Parker- Browne expedition is contained in The Conquest of Mount
McKinley (New York, Putnams, 1913), and that of Dr. Stuck in The
Ascent o/ Denali (New York, Scribners, 1914).
(2,369) li
VII
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM
ni
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM
(Map, p. 216.)
The "spell of far Arabia" has been a potent thing
from the days when the Egyptians drew wealth from
the spice-land of Punt, and Greek traders brought
stories of the gums and jewels of Araby the Blessed.
But ever since it became the Holy Land of Islam a
veil of secrecy, other than that of its stern climate
and inhospitable deserts, has descended upon it. It
is one of the oldest of arenas of adventure, and it is
still one of the least exploited ; indeed, in its great
Southern Desert it holds one of the few unriddled
mysteries of the globe. Except for the semi-mythical
Gregorio, who may be read of in Albuquerque's Com-
mentaries, no one who did not profess the creed of
Islam has entered its two Holy Cities and lived. But
the greatest tale of Arabian exploration is not con-
cerned with Mecca and Medina. It is to be found
rather in the journeys of the English soldier Captain
Sadlier in Nejd ; of Sir Richard Burton in the land of
218
214 THE LAST SECRETS
Midian ; of Wallin, who crossed the great Nafud
sands; of William Gifford Palgrave, who may, or
may not, have been an agent of Napoleon III. ; and,
above all, of Charles Montague Doughty, who, as an
avowed Christian, explored the Northern Hedjaz, and
in his Arabia Deserta has written one of the foremost
classics of travel in the Enghsh tongue.
Compared with some of these wanderings, a visit to
the Holy Cities was a simple matter, requiring only a
firm nerve, a good knowledge of Arabic and of Moham-
medan ritual, and a real or professed adherence to the
creed of Islam. At the beginning of this century
the Ust of Europeans who had entered Mecca and
Medina was a long one. They were mostly renegades —
French, English, Irish, Scottish, and Italian. In 1807
a certain Domingo Badia y LebUch of Cadiz, travel-
ling as a Moslem prince called AH Bey, and probably
in the pay of Napoleon, entered Mecca in state ; but
he had become a genuine Mussulman. In 1815 one
Thomas Keith, a deserter from the 72nd Highlanders,
was Governor of Medina — surely one of the strangest
posts ever held even by a Scot ! The great European
travellers like Burckhardt, Wallin, and Burton went
to the Holy Cities in order that by attaining the rank
and fame of a Hadji they might win an advantage for
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 215
travelling in other Moslem lands. More than one of
them has described minutely the interior of both Mecca
and Medina and the ritual of the great ceremonies.
The Holy Places, though few Western eyes had seen
them, were sufficiently well known to the Western
world. Their true unveiling may be said to have come
about during the Great War, when Hussein, the Sherif
of Mecca, fought as an ally with the British, and, as
King of the Hedjaz, proclaimed his independence of
Turkey.
Yet one journey was taken just before the Great War
which must rank by itself. It told the world nothing
that was not known before ; but it had the merit of
giving a picture of Mecca and Medina under the latest
conditions — a picture drawn with such vigour and in
such detail that it may fairly claim to have revealed
the Holy Cities in a new Ught to the ordinary man.
Mr. A. J. B. Wavell greatly distinguished himself
in command of Arab scouts in East Africa in the early
part of the Great War, and was responsible for the
brilliant affair at Gazi. In that campaign he gave
his life for his country.* He had been at Winchester,
and in 1908, when he made the plan for visiting Mecca,
• He fell on January 8, 1916.
216 THE LAST SECRETS
had been living for some time at Mombasa, where
he had acquired Arabic and Swahili, and a consider-
able knowledge of Moslem customs. His motive was
partly curiosity, partly, as he says, to accustom him-
self to Arab ways, with a view to further explorations
in Arabia, and partly in order to obtain the useful
prestige of a Hadji. He chose as his companions a
certain Abdul Wahid, an Arab from Aleppo who was
established in Berlin, and Masaudi, a Mombasa native.
The three met at Marseilles on September 23, 1908.
They started in good time, for though the pilgrimage
was not to take place till the beginning of the following
January, Mr. Wavell wanted to go first to Medina, and
also to prepare himself by a preliminary discipHne in
Eastern Hfe. He managed to secure a Turkish pass-
port, which described him as one Ah bin Mohammed,
aged twenty-five, a subject of Zanzibar on his way to
Mecca.
The three found a vessel at Genoa which took them
to Alexandria, where they managed, not without
trouble, to get their medicine chest, pistols, and am-
munition past the Customs. They then took pas-
sages on a Khedivial mail ship for Bejnrout. Mr.
WaveU had feared that the language difficulty would
be serious, but he found it less formidable than he
; Damascus
Syrian Dese rt
> Luxor
Korosko
Madam Salih
Medina
Berber
100 200 ^® 300
' ■ I ■ I Miles
A Z I R
Wavell's Journey to Mecca.
■^ ■ ooe r,
i — ^/.cj: LuL
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 217
expected, since the dialects of Arabic are many. He
explained to those who found imperfections in his
accent that in Zanzibar the colloquial language was
Swahili and that no one talked Arabic ; and on the few
occasions when he had to speak Swahili he inverted the
story, announcing that, having been born in Muscat,
his real language was Arabic. As Sir Richard Burton
discovered in his own journey, it was rare indeed to
find any one sufficiently well acquainted with both
languages to find him out. Meantime he had changed
at Alexandria into Arab clothes and shaved his head.
They reached Beyrout safely, and proceeded at once
by rail to Damascus. As they did not propose to
start for Medina for some weeks, they took rooms and
settled down, devoting great attention to the various
Moslem ceremonies, and picking up the right kind of
phrases and quotations and greetings. It is on such
small things that the efficacy of a disguise depends.
" There are nearly as many white men at Mecca,"
Mr. Wavell writes in his account of his adventures,*
" as there are men black or brown in colour. Syrian
' Arabs ' not infrequently have fair hair and blue eyes,
as likewise have some of the natives of the Holy Cities
themselves. I was once asked what colour I stained
* A Modern Pilgrim in Mecca, by A. J. B. Wavell (Constable, 1912).
218 THE LAST SECRETS
myself for this journey. The question reveals the
curious ignorance that Kes at the bottom of the so-
called race prejudice, of which some people are so
proud. You might as well black yourself all over to
play Hamlet ! "
Abdul Wahid had brought letters of introduction
to a local merchant, who was most hospitable, and
supervised the preparations for the journey. They
passed safely through the period of Ramadan, and so
complete was Mr. WaveU's get-up, and so stalwart
his Moslem respectability, that it was with some diffi-
culty that he prevented a middle-aged lady and her
two daughters from joining his party for the pilgrimage.
He bought the " Ihram," the white robes which are
required when entering Mecca, a full camp equipment,
and a certain number of stores, and deposited his
money with his merchant friend, who gave him two
cheques on his agents, one at Medina and one at Mecca.
He proposed to travel to Medina by the Hedjaz railway,
a very different method from those used by earlier
adventurers when aiming at Mecca.
The third-class carriages were desperately crowded,
and the train started to the accompaniment of gramo-
phones — a modern invention which is very popular
in the Hedjaz. On the way Mr. Wavell had a touch
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 219
of malaria, and his fellow pilgrims showed him every
kindness. Presently the train reached Medain Salih,
the boundary of the Hedjaz, which no infidel is per-
mitted to pass. On the fourth day the rocky hilla
opened, and through a gap appeared the minarets of
the Prophet's mosque. They arrived at Medina in the
middle of a battle, for the Turkish garrison had come
to loggerheads with the neighbouring Bedawin, and the
Holy City was more or less in a state of siege. The
railway was spoiUng trade for the neighbouring tribes,
and they were demanding compensation, which Con-
stantinople would not pay.
Medina lies in an open plain some 3,000 feet above
sea-level. To the south the country is open, but on
the north and west, between five and ten miles distant,
rise rocky mountains. The city, which has a popu-
lation of some 30,000, lives entirely on the pilgrims,
as an English watering-place lives on summer visitors.
The pilgrims are classified by their lands of origin, and
there are official guides, called Mutowifs, attached to
each group. The first trouble arose from these guides.
If Mr. Wavell went about with the Zanzibar Mutowifs
he was certain to meet some one who knew him in
Mombasa, even if he were not caught out in the
220 THE LAST SECRETS
language. So it was arranged that Abdul Wahid
should profess to come from Bagdad, while Mr.
Wavell passed as " a Derweish," and Masaudi as
his slave. A " Derweish," which denotes properly a
member of certain monastic orders, is a title occa-
sionally assumed by pilgrims who do not wish to be
identified with any particular nationality.
Happily, at the station there were no Zanzibar
guides, and the party were able to find rooms in a re-
tired corner at the moderate rate of £2 a month. The
landlord was an Abyssinian called Iman, a man of some
private means, who had been captured as a child by
Arab slavers and sold in Mecca. He proved a most
useful friend to the party during their stay.
So began a curious life of endless religious obser-
vations. Apart from the sacred places, which few
European eyes had beheld, there was a perpetual
interest in the study of the pilgrims. " A large cara-
van came in from Yembu, bringing crowds of Indians,
Javanese, and Chinamen. Every Eastern race might
be identified in the motley crowd, and every variety
of costume, till the whole resembled nothing so much
as a fancy dress ball. In the same Hne of prayer stand
European Turks, with their frock coats and stick-up
collars ; AnatoUans, with enormous trousers and
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 221
fantastic weapons ; Arabs from the West, who look as
if they were arrayed for burial ; the Bedou (Bedawin),
with their spears and scimitars ; and Indians, who, in
spite of their being the richest class there, managed, as
usual, to look the most unkempt and the least clean.
Then, besides, were the Persians, Chinese, Javanese,
Japanese, Malayans, a dozen different African races,
Egyptians, Afghans, Baluchies, Swahilis, and ' Arabs '
of every description." Representatives of half the
races of the globe may be picked out in the mosque
any day during the month before the pilgrimage.
The behaviour of the pilgrims, who now saw with
their own eyes the tomb of the Prophet, which from
their childhood they had been taught to regard with
awe, was a proof of the living reality of the Islamic
faith. " Many burst into tears and frantically kissed
the raihngs : I have seen Indians and Afghans fall
down apparently unconscious. They seem to be much
more affected here than before the Kaaba itself. At
Mecca the feeUng is of awe and reverence ; here the
personal element comes in. The onlooker might fancy
that they were visiting the tomb of some dear friend,
one whom they had actually known and been intimate
with in his lifetime. With frantic interest they listen
to their guides as they describe the surroundings.
222 THE LAST SECRETS
Here is the place where the Prophet prayed, the pulpit
he preached from, the pillar against which he leant ;
there, looking to the mosque, is the window of Abu
Bakar's house, where for long he stayed as a guest ; and
beyond is the little garden planted by his daughter
Fatima." Moreover, there is no suggestion of infidel
authority, the Moslem standards float over the town,
Moslem cannon protect its gates, and no unbeliever
may enter. But there are startling touches of
modernity. In the shops you may buy European
tinned goods and note advertisements of Cadbury's
chocolates and Huntley and Palmer's biscuits !
The party had brought introductions from Damascus
and Abdul Wahid had made various friends, so they
saw a good deal of society. The time was just after
the rising of the Young Turks and the grant of the
Constitution. Mr. Wavell, who was a staunch Tory,
found to his disgust that every one talked parhamen-
tarianism and Liberal principles. England and the
English were everywhere in high favour because of our
attitude in the recent quarrel with Austria over the
annexation of Bosnia. " I am afraid I managed to
give the impression that Zanzibar is a sadly back-
ward state, or that I myself am peculiarly stupid.
Not to know a word of any European language is to
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 223
be held very ignorant, even in Medina. Most people
of the class with whom I associated had at any rate
a smattering of French, and sometimes of English too.
I was careful never to know anything."
Their stay in Medina was much enlivened by the
Bedawin siege. Mr. Wavell tried to get enhsted in
the defence force, and when that plan failed, suc-
ceeded in getting into a very warm corner just outside
the gates. They visited like industrious tourists every
possible place of interest, and few pilgrims can have
spent a more enhghtening three weeks. During the
whole time they were never in real danger. They
had, indeed, a scuffle with a Persian Mutowif, who
would insist that Mr. Wavell was a Persian ; but
by vigorous bluffing they made him apologize, and
afterwards employed him as a guide. Once only
was there a hint of trouble. Masaudi, standing in
the mosque one day before the noonday prayer, found
himself face to face with five Mombasa SwahiHs who
knew him intimately, and, what was worse, knew
Mr. Wavell. Masaudi showed remarkable gifts of
mendacity. He said he had left Mr. Wavell in Eng-
land, and having saved a Httle money thought the
present was a good time to perform the pilgrimage.
He was in Medina, he said, as a servant of some rich
224 THE LAST SECRETS
Egyptian pilgrims. As he walked back after prayer
he dropped his string of beads. The Swahilis asked
where his house was, and he promised to show it
them ; but half-way up the street he suddenly
remembered the beads, bolted back, and lost himself
in the crowd.
The incident convinced Mr. Wavell that he had better
start without delay for Mecca. Their plan was to
go to the coast at Yembu, for which a caravan was
starting at once. They arranged for three camels,
one to carry a shugduf, which is a cross between a
pannier and a howdah, and the other two for lug-
gage ; and they bought the necessary food. They
took with them a Persian called Jaffa as cook,
and his brother Ibrahim as general servant. The
luggage was carried down to the big square where
the caravan was parked, and where the travellers
had to pass the night. That evening there occurred
an untoward event. Mr. Wavell was going to a
shop for some small purchase, when he met two
Mutowifs who demanded to know his nationality.
The Mutowifs, being a strict trades union, were con-
vinced that he was defrauding the brotherhood. He
took a high hne and showed his pistol, and, fortunately,
his late landlord came down the street at the moment
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 225
and took his side. What might have been an ugly
experience ended in a minor street brawl.
The journey to Yembu was little better than a night-
mare. The fashionable road from Medina to Mecca
is overland, or back to Damascus and so direct to
Jiddah by the Suez Canal. Only poor people go by the
Yembu route, which is supposed to be the most haz-
ardous and the roughest in the Hedjaz. There were
no escort or police arrangements, no daily market, and
each traveller had to carry his own provisions and
water. The Bedawin hired out the camels, which num-
bered about 5,000, and a Bedawi sheikh was in charge.
The countryside was infested by robbers who constantly
cut off stragglers. The ground, too, was difficult
going, being a rough mountain-land, and, while the
noons were scorching, the nights were bitterly cold.
Every night an encampment was made, roughly
circular in shape, into which the whole caravan was
packed in the smallest possible space. " While I was
trying to get warm a man stumbled against me and
nearly knocked me into the fire. Turning round, I
was shocked to see a figure, stained almost from head
to foot with blood from a tremendous gash in the head,
obviously a sword cut. He asked for water, and I
went into the tent to get him some, but returning,
(2,860) 15
226 THE LAST SECRETS
found him gone. We heard the next day that no less
than six men had been murdered that night and many
others wounded ; and so it went on till we reached
Yembu. These unfortunates were mostly people
who could not afford camels, and so had to perform
the journey on foot. Straying from the main body
in search of firewood they got picked up by the
marauders hanging on the flanks, who seized every
opportunity to plunder such stragglers of their
miserable possessions, and killed unhesitatingly any
who resisted."
It was in this country that Charles Doughty spent
part of his time, and Mr. Wavell thinks that one reason
of his success was that he carried nothing worth steal-
ing. The fact that Doughty denied neither his re-
ligion nor his nationality seemed to him not the most
remarkable fact about the achievement. " The
Bedou themselves are not fanatical on these points,
and he did not attempt to enter the forbidden cities.
Of course, the fact of a stranger being a Christian is
always a good excuse for knocking him on the head ;
but failing it they will soon find another if they want
to do so, and will be quite uninfluenced by it if they
don't."
They had one row with their camel man, Saad, who
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 227
tried to extort bakhsheesh. Suddenly he quieted
down, and became all politeness to the end of the
journey. The reason for this was that that resource-
ful Uar Ibrahim had told him that Mr. Wavell was a
nephew of the Governor of Yembu. This story served
the travellers well. It spread through the caravan,
and many of the pilgrims who were being blackmailed
by their camel-men came to him and begged his pro-
tection, and received it. At last, on the dawn of the
sixth day, after trekking without a stop for the last
twenty hours, they reached the gates of Yembu.
Here they were delayed some time, owing to the
fact that the pilgrim ship to take them to Jiddah —
an old Greek vessel chartered by a syndicate of Per-
sians — would not start till its owners considered that
sufficient pilgrims had arrived. Abdul Wahid now
became the popular leader. At the head of a mob of
passengers he seized the Persians and carried them off
to the Governor. Mounted on a pile of sugar bags
he delivered an impassioned address, concluding with
" We had better be dealing with Christians than Mos-
lems, who cheat their brethren in this fashion." " Mur-
murs of protest," says Mr. Wavell, " deprecated this
revolting comparison. We all thought he was going
a little too far." The Persians finally capitulated,
228 THE LAST SECRETS
and the ship got under way. But there came one
last contretemps. A party of Megribi Arabs had passed
the quarantine and were half-way out to the ship when
one of them died. The shore authorities refused to
let them land again and the Persians declined to take
the corpse aboard. The Arabs could not throw it
into the sea because there were certain ceremonial
washings to be performed and certain prayers to be
said. An Egyptian lawyer on board gave it as his
opinion that the man, having taken his ticket, was
entitled to his passage, dead or aUve, there being no
saving clause in the contract. Finally the Megribis
got sick of arguing, swarmed over the bulwarks, and
hoisted up their departed comrade. Their fierce
faces and long knives settled the point of law.
At half -past four in the afternoon the syren blew to
announce that the pilgrims were within that latitude
where they must exchange their ordinary clothes for
the Ihram — the garb which has to be worn by all
travellers who attain a certain distance from Mecca.
The costume consists of two white bath towels, one
worn round the loins and the other over the shoulders.
The head is unprotected, but deaths from sunstroke
are singularly few. The costume is not becoming,
especially in the case of a fat man. " A party of
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 229
elderly European Turks close to us looked peculiarly
ludicrous, their appearance suggesting members of
the Athenaeum Club suddenly evicted from a Turkish
bath."
The party remained four days at Jiddah, visiting
among other places the tomb of Eve, who apparently
was about a quarter of a mile in height, so it was a
tiring business to make the necessary perambulation of
her sepulchre. Owing to their behaviour at Yembu
they had acquired much kudos among the pilgrims and
had no difficulties during their stay. The only anxiety
was about the Mombasa Swahilis, and also about a
certain Mombasa sheikh who knew Mr. Wavell and
was proposing to go to Mecca that year. As neither
sheikh nor SwahiKs arrived, they decided to risk it
and go on to Mecca, after Mr. Wavell had left a letter
for the sheikh requesting him to hold his tongue.
They found a Mutowif who was a local agent of one
of the principal Mecca guides, to whom he wrote
recommending them. They never intended to employ
this guide, but the recommendation gave them an
excuse to refuse to employ others. Having taken
every precaution they could think of, they prepared
for the last stage of the journey. "Abdul Wahid
made a vow that if he returned safely he would present
230 THE LAST SECRETS
three dollars to the poor of Jiddah. We told him
we thought he was asking the Almighty to do it too
cheaply and that he had much better make it a
sovereign. To our disgust, when he did get back, he
utterly declined to disgorge the promised sum.
The journey from Jiddah to Mecca can be per-
formed in a day, for it is only some forty miles. The
road is protected by a line of blockhouses, every mile
or so there is a restaurant or a booth for refreshment,
and all day long during the pilgrimage season there
is a continuous caravan. A strange silence broods
over everything. There is no shouting or singing or
firing of guns, and the camels move over the deep soft
sand with scarcely a sound, for to the Moslem it is
the approach to the holy of holies, " To him it is a
place hardly belonging to this world, overshadowed
like the Tabernacle of old by the almost tangible
presence of the deity. Five times daily throughout
his life has he turned his face towards this city, whose
mysteries he is now about to view with his own eyes.
Moreover, according to the common belief, pilgrimage
brings certain responsibilities and even perils along
with its manifold blessings. Good deeds in Mecca
count many thousand times their value elsewhere,
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 231
but sin that is committed there will reap its reward
in hell." Mr, WaveU and his companions, decently
but simply clad in their bath towels, approached the
city repeating the ceremonial prayers. To one which
began, " Lord, Who hast brought me in safety
to this place, do Thou bring me safely out again,"
he said a fervid " Amen."
Mecca Hes in a deep-cut hoUow of the hiUs, and is
not visible till travellers are at its gates. Presently
they found themselves in the great square which con-
tains the Kaaba, the black covering of which is in
startling contrast with the dazzling white marble of
the pavement. The Kaaba itself is a cube about
forty feet square, built of granite blocks, and let into
the wall is a great black stone. This stone is believed
to have fallen from heaven, which it probably did,
as it is clearly a meteorite. Barefooted, the little
party moved round it the requisite seven times, chant-
ing the proper prayers. Then a smaU circular patch
of hair was shaved from their heads, and the first
part of the ceremony was over.
Mecca was then under the semi-independent rule of
Sherif Hussein, and, on the whole, seemed to be well
governed ; but the problem of the municipal author-
ities in looking after the vast crowd of pilgrims was
232 THE LAST SECRETS
no easy one. As at Medina, every race on earth was
represented there. Mr. Wavell was most struck by
the Javanese, who were present in great numbers,
for there was then a strong Islamic revival in the Far
East. The party found comfortable lodgings in a
quiet street, and, as at Medina, went much into society,
owing to the wide acquaintance of Abdul Wahid.
Mecca is one of the few places remaining where there
is an open slave-market, and female slaves may be
bought for prices ranging from £20 to £100, though
Georgians and Circassians fetch more. Masaudi dis-
covered an acquaintance in a boy called Kepi from
Mombasa, whose father had died on the pilgrimage,
and was now left destitute. Kepi was accordingly
attached to the party. Mr. Wavell heard the good
news that the Mombasa sheikh, whose coming he had
been warned of, had now written saying that he would
not arrive that year.
The time passed pleasantly in sight-seeing and giving
and receiving hospitaUty. Mr. Wavell gave one
dinner to no less than twelve guests, which, since he
had an excellent cook, was very successful. There
are few more curious incidents in the literature of
travel than this party given by a disguised Christian
in the Moslem holy of hoUes to a company which
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 233
included Arabs from Bussorah and Mecca, two Persian
merchants, and a Turkish ofl&cer from the Bagdad
Corps. Most Western luxuries can be obtained in
Mecca, including ice cream, which, according to Mr.
Wavell, is a frozen mixture of tinned milk, dirty water,
and cholera germs ! Alcoholic liquor can also be got
if you know where to go for it.
The great festival was now approaching. A white
linen band was fastened round the black covering of
the Kaaba, which remained there till the great day,
when the covering was changed. A new covering is
brought every year from Egjrpt, made of dull black
silk and cotton, embroidered with the name of God
on every square foot. It is prepared in Constanti-
nople, and is said to cost £3,600. The main ceremony
of the festival is as follows : On a certain fixed day
all adults must leave the city before nightfall, and go
to a village called Mina, some five miles to the north.
They pass the night there, and go nine miles farther
on the next morning to Mount Arafat, where they
remain till sunset. They then return, and sleep at
Nimrah, half-way between Arafat and Mina. The
third day they must be back at Mina in the morning,
go through the ceremony of throwing stones at the
Three Devils, proceed to Mecca for other ceremonies,
234 THE LAST SECRETS
and return to Mina for the night. The fourth day
is spent at Mina, and at noon on the fifth day they
return to Mecca. The bath towels of the Ihram are
now relinquished, and the pilgrim dons the best new
clothes which he can afford. He is then entitled to
the name of Hadji, and thereafter through life can wear
a special headgear, such as a green turban.
The exodus from the city to Mina was a strange
sight. The different holy carpets were escorted by
regiments and brass bands, that of Egypt marching to
the tune of the " Barren Rocks of Aden." Sherif
Hussein was there on horseback, accompanied by a
crowd of spearmen and a squadron of racing camels.
The ride to Mina beggared description. " The best
idea of what it is like," Mr. Wavell wrote, " will be
gained by considering that at least half a milUon
people are traversing these nine miles of road between
sunrise and ten o'clock this day ; that about half of
them are mounted, and that many of them possess
baggage animals as well. The roar of this great column
is like a breaking sea, and the dust spreads for miles
over the surrounding country. When, passing through
the second defile, we came in sight of Arafat itself,
the spectacle was stranger still. The hill was literally
black with people, and tents were springing up around
THE HOLY CITIES OF ISLAM 235
it, hundreds to the minute, in an ever-widening circle.
As we approached, the dull murmur caused by thou-
sands of people shouting the formula, ' Lebeka, lebeka,
AUahooma lebeka,' which had long been audible,
became so loud that it dominated every other sound.
In the distance it sounded rather ominous, suggestive
of some deep disturbance of great power, like the
rumble of an earthquake."
The hygienic conditions of the exodus were of course
abominable. Tanks and springs were soon fouled
by people bathing in them, and the condition of the
hill-side was filthy beyond description. Often some
infectious disease like cholera decimates the pilgrims,
but our travellers were fortunate in escaping it. They
went through all the proper ceremonies, and stoned
the Three Devils at Mina with gusto. The Three
Devils are three stone pillars, and, in a mob of many
thousands of bad shots, a good many pilgrims are
bound to suflfer. They bought a sheep to sacrifice,
like the others, and a mess of offal and blood was soon
added to the attractions of the countryside. They
then went back to Mecca, kissed the Black Stone, had
another square inch of hair shaved from their temples,
and were free to put off the bath towels. Now was
the moment for the new clothes. Abdul Wahid
236 THE LAST SECRETS
appeared in a bilious yellow garment brought from
Damascus ; Masaudi in an obsolete regimental mess
waistcoat ; while Mr. Wavell was chastely arrayed in
white cloth robes, a black jubba, and a gold sash with
a dagger.
Thus attired they set out again for Mina for the last
ceremonies. In the night a thief got into their tent,
and carried off Masaudi's new turban, £5 in gold, and
various oddments, including a couple of pistols. In
the morning they went to salute the Sherif , and when
they had returned and were sitting in their tent, passed
through the most dangerous moment of the adventure.
The wall of the tent was down, as is usual in the heat of
the day, and they were squatting on the carpet, when
suddenly they heard an exclamation from Masaudi.
Looking round, they saw, standing within a few feet
of them and looking straight into the tent, three of
the Mombasa Swahilis whom they had met at Medina.
It scarcely seemed possible that they could miss seeing
Masaudi, and if they did they would certainly come
into the tent to greet him, when Mr. Wavell was bound
to be recognized. The morning sun, however, was
shining right in their eyes, so they saw nothing, and
passed on. As soon as they had turned their backs
Mr. WaveU and Masaudi ran out of the tent on the other
THE HOLY CITIES OP ISLAM 237
side and mingled with the crowd. They returned to
Mecca, to be congratulated by their friends on the suc-
cessfully accomplished pilgrimage, and Mr. Wavell was
free to go into the world as Hadji Ali bin Mohammed.
It was now their business to get out of Mecca as
soon as possible, especially as money was running low.
They paid the necessary farewell visits, hired the
transport, and started, intending to do the journey in
one day. They were, however, held up by a sentry on
the road, and had to spend a cold and comfortless night
in the open, and did not enter Jiddah tiU sunrise. At
Jiddah they separated ; Masaudi went to Mombasa,
Abdul Wahid to Persia, and Mr. Wavell to Egypt.
In summing up the expedition, Mr. Wavell was dis-
posed to attribute his success not to any histrionic
gifts of his own, but to the ignorance of the inhabi-
tants of the Holy Cities, and their lack of interest in
the outside world, even the Islamic world. " There
are so many different sects in Islam, and its adherents
are found in so many different countries, that I seriously
believe that if some one invented for himself a country
and a language that did not exist at all, and journeyed
thus to Mecca, no one there would know enough geog-
raphy to find him out. Yet with all, they are quick
enough in their way, and if some Mutowif would take
238 THE LAST SECRETS
the trouble to write a book on ethnography in its re-
lation to the Islam of to-day, and classify the different
races that come to Mecca, such a deception as I prac-
tised would become impossible." They did, as a
matter of fact, excite a certain suspicion, and their
two servants, though they were Persians and knew little
Arabic, must have had their own views. The great
assets of the travellers were their knowledge of Arabic
and Moslem ceremonial, and the fact that Mr. Wavell
took up his disguise long before he approached the
Hedjaz. He considered that Medina was much the
more dangerous place of the two, and that no traveller
should go there who was not thoroughly at home in
his oriental character.
Whatever may be said, the journey is one of extreme
danger and dehcacy, and demands not only great
knowledge, but perpetual vigilance. It must be re-
membered that a European is all the time in the midst
of a fanatical and devout people, and that the highest
merit would be acquired by any one who might dis-
cover and denounce the unbehever. In spite of every
precaution there must be an enormous element of
luck, and Mr. Wavell's conclusion is that his escape
was due rather to a series of happy chances than to
his own good management.
VIII
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA
230
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA
{Map, p. 248.)
Almost every part of the globe has suffered some
change in the past century. It may have altered its
appearance by settlement and cultivation and the
growth of cities ; or, if it still remains a wilderness,
there are routes of commerce through it which bring
it to the knowledge of the world. But the great
island of New Guinea is almost as Uttle changed
to-day by the advent of white adventurers as when,
in the year 1527, Jorge de Meneses, the Portuguese
Governor of the Spice Islands, first landed on its
swampy shores. In 1545, eighteen years later, it
received the name by which it is known to-day. The
Portuguese Empire decayed, and during the seven-
teenth century the Dutch appeared. In the eighteenth
century many famous voyagers, Hke Dampier, Car-
teret, and Captain Cook, touched the island, and in
the last century the rapid opening up of the world by
travellers and missionaries bore fruit even in those
(2,869) 241 * 16
242 THE LAST SECRETS
remote seas. The Dutch held the western end ; in
1884 Germany laid claim to the north-eastern part ;
and that same year the south-eastern section, which
had been formally taken over in 1883 by Queensland,
was annexed to the British Crown. In 1899 the
Dutch boundary was delimited, and Holland, with
the assent of the Powers, assumed direct control of
her share. The one change to-day in these arrange-
ments is that the former German section is now ad-
ministered under mandate by the Commonwealth of
AustraHa.
The first decade of this century saw great exploring
activity on the part of all three European masters.
The Dutch especially did excellent work, and Dr.
Lorentz was the first man to reach the snows of the
inland mountains. But few of the secrets of the
island — geographical, zoological, and botanical — have
yet been unriddled. The place is so remote from
Europe, its cUmate is so deadly, its inhabitants so
treacherous, and its forests and swamps so impenetrable,
that exploration there is in many ways a more desperate
undertaking than anywhere else on the globe.
I have selected two expeditions as an example of
what the pioneer must undergo. In 1910 the Orni-
thologists' Union sent out an expedition to investigate
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GU^IEA 243
the New Guinea fauna and collect specimens. Captain
Cecil Rawling, whose thirst for the unknown was un-
quenchable, accompanied it on the geographical side,
and Mr. A. F. R. WoUaston as medical officer. There
was no proper survey equipment, as the mission was
primarily one of naturalists. Ten Gurkhas were en-
listed from India, and the Dutch Government sup-
plied a certain number of Javanese troops. Coolies
also were recruited in Java, who turned out to be
hopelessly unsuitable both in physique and character
for any serious travel in the wilds. The majority
were about sixteen years of age, and they appeared
in the jungle decently dressed in black frock coats
and bowler hats !
The part selected was the southern coast of the
Dutch territory, and it was Captain Rawhng's hope
that they would be able to penetrate to that belt of
snow mountains, at the head of the coastal rivers,
running from the Nassau Range in the west to
Wilhelmina Peak in the east, where Dr. Lorentz had
been the pioneer. Obviously it was vital to find a
river which would take them direct to the hills. But
they had no previous information to go upon, and
were compelled to select their stream at random.
Had they gone farther east, and chosen the Utakwa,
244 THE LAST SECRETS
they would have found a current navigable for an
ocean-going steamer for seventeen miles from its
mouth, and for launches for many miles more — a
river, moreover, running directly from the highest
snows of Mount Carstensz. As it was, they hit upon
a river called the Mimika, a small jungle-fed stream
rising in the low foothills sixty miles to the west of
Carstensz, and twenty miles or so short of the main
range. The Mimika, too, was full of endless windings
and Uable to sudden and violent floodings. Hence it
was of httle use to the expedition in the way of trans-
port. This was the more regrettable since transport
was the essence of the problem. From the foothills
of the mountains to the sea hes a belt of forest hke a
barbed-wire entanglement. This forest is so dense
that the cutting of a road can only progress at the
rate of 100 yards a day. It is swampy, and often, in
flood-time, under water, and filled with every form
of noxious insect life. Unless this nightmare land
can be circumvented by the use of a broad river chan-
nel, it must take even a strong party many months
before they reach the base of the Mils.
This was what happened to Captain Rawling. On
January 26, 1910, after a base camp had been estab-
Ushed at Wakatimi, not far from the Mimika mouth,
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 245
he set off to ascend the river. Here is his description
of the country : —
"It is quite impossible for any one who has not visited
these parts of New Guinea to realize the density of the forest
growth. The vegetation, through which only the scantiest
glimpses of the sky can be obtained, appears to form, as it
were, two great horizontal strata. The first comprises the
giant trees, whose topmost boughs are 150 feet or more above
the ground ; the other, the bushes, shrubs, and trees of lesser
growth, which never attain a greater height than 30 to 40 feet.
Such is the richness of the soil that not one square foot re-
mains untenanted, and the never-ending struggle to reach
upwards towards the longed-for light goes on silently and
relentlessly. Creepers and parasites in endless variety cling
to every stem, slowly but surely throttling their hosts. From
tree to tree their tentacles stretch out, seizing on to the first
projecting branch and limb, and forming such a close and
tangled mass that the dead and dying giants of the forest
are prevented from falling to the ground. . , .
" The various devices recommended in the books of one's
childhood, and, it may be added, in learned books as well,
whereby the traveller is enabled to recover a lost trail or
regain the right direction, are here of no avail. For instance,
moss does not grow more on one side of a tree-trunk than on
the other ; trees do not lean away from the prevailing wind ;
nor is the position of the sun a guide, for it is seldom visible.
In fact, the traveller has nothing to rely upon but the compass
or a local guide, and even the latter is often at fault. Hope-
less indeed does the outlook appear when the wanderer,
hedged in by a wall of scrub and creeper which limits hia
vision to a distance of ten or twelve yards, realizes that he
has lost his bearings ; when the vastness of the forest seems
to press upon him, and there is no sound to be heard but the
246 THE LAST SECRETS
drip, drip of the water-laden trees and the bubbling of the
stinking bog underfoot. His only chance of escape is to
find a stream, and follow it down till it joins a main river."
The first big episode was the discovery of the
Pygmies who lived in the foothills, and were assidu-
ously hunted by the forest tribes. The average height
of these little men was 4 feet 7 inches, and Captain
Rawling penetrated to their village in a clearing above
the head waters of the Mimika. The Mimika source
was reached, but led them nowhere, and they fared
no better with another small stream to the west, called
the Kapare. Then by accident a secret native path
was discovered running eastward — a mere tunnel in
the matted forest. By this route they were able to
reach a parallel river, called the Tuaba, which was a
tributary of the larger Kamura. From a village called
Ibo as a centre, the expedition made various casts
east and north, but found it impossible to get near
the skirts of the hills.
Captain Rawling returned to the coast and made
excursions along the eastern shore, but found no
adjacent river mouth which promised better. By this
time it was June, and the floods began with such
vigour that practically the whole country between the
mountains and the sea was under water. When the
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 247
floods ebbed, a resolute attempt was made to push
east from Ibo, and with a good deal of trouble another
parallel stream was reached, caUed the Wataikwa.
The party founded a camp there, and explored the
upper waters of that stream. Travelling was ex-
tremely difficult, because the only decent road was
the river bed, and this route was promptly made
impossible by a new spate. The travellers had to
face the fact that the farther they went eastward
the greater became the labour of carrying supplies,
for their base camp remained on the Mimika.
Still, an effort must be made unless the expedition
was to admit failure. It was decided that the best
plan was to try and cut a road through the forest to
the next stream on the east, in the hope that it would
lead them into the hills. This was done, and the
Iwaka River was reached after much severe toil.
They had entered a desperate country, strewn with
moss-covered boulders and seamed with gullies covered
with an impenetrable mass of timber. The density of
this growth was unbelievable ; through it no man could
force a way unless with an axe in hand, and as most
of the trees were of very hard wood — the stems vary-
ing from four to eight inches in diameter — and clothed
from top to bottom with damp earth covered with
248 THE LAST SECRETS
mosa, progress at times became impossible. An idea
of the labour involved in the task of clearing a two-
foot path through this forest may be judged by the
fact that a stretch of five thousand yards required
three weeks' constant work before a man could pass
freely along. On one day two cutters achieved a
length of two hundred and ten yards, and on another,
when Captain RawUng was working by himself, all
he could add was a piece of ninety yards in length.
No wonder he asks, " Can this forest, with its horrible
monotony and impregnabiUty, be equalled by any
other in the world ? "
Down came the rain again, and in August the
country was all under water. The advance was not
renewed till the beginning of 1911, when fresh suppUes
had arrived from England, and the old motor-boat
had been put in repair. So far, a year's hard labour
had not taken the explorers within measurable dis-
tance of their goal. With the help of a launch, food
supplies for eight weeks were stored at the head of
the Mimika. One story may be quoted as a piece of
comic rehef in a very grim campaign. On 4th January
two men quarrelled in camp and killed each other.
" The sergeant who, by the way, was a foreigner, took
charge of the burial ceremonials, and was evidently quite
\^
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 249
determined that, for his part, nothing should be lacking
which the importance of the occasion demanded. Drawing his
sword, and placing himself between the graves, he harangued
the spectators. ' Men,' he said, ' this day two servants of the
Government have lost their lives at the hands of each other.
Were they not both good men 1 hein.' ' One man very bad
man,' chipped in an officious convict, but a glance from the
ofEended sergeant made him wish that he had never spoken.
' Whether they will both go to heaven I cannot say,' exclaimed
he, ' but I think Allah ' — pointing upwards with his sword —
' will first purge them with a fire. Take this as a lesson.'
Then, drawing himself up to his full height as befitted the
occasion, he returned his sword with a clank to the scabbard,
and, as far as the public was concerned, the ceremony was at
an end. The sergeant, however, had not yet finished. Ee-
turning to his hut, he refreshed himself with a few glasses of
gin, and played on the mouth-organ the national anthems
of the three flags under which he had served. This terminated
the funeral obsequies, and with the exception of the official
report and the entry in the accounts ' To one bottle gin
for disinfecting corpse,' nothing remained to mark the san-
guinary affair."
The Iwaka was safely reached, and the last stage
began. At first the advance was up its right bank,
but this only brought the travellers back to the upper
glen of the Wataikwa, which they had already found
impossible. It was clear that the Iwaka must be
crossed and the ridges to the east ascended. Getting
over that stream was an ugly business, and it was
achieved only by the heroism of one of the Gurkhas,
250 THE LAST SECRETS
who managed to haul himself hand over hand along
a thin rope. Captain Rawhng records that it was
" one of the best actions carried out in cold blood
that I have ever had the good fortune to witness." A
rough bridge was constructed, and on the morning
of February 8, 1911, thirteen months after their first
landing on the coast, the party had at last a road to
the upper ridges. It was thick, misty weather, and
of the farther mountains they only had occasional
glimpses. Camp was pitched at an altitude of 5,400
feet, but not on sohd ground, for all the climbing had
been done on the top of live or dead timber. The
following morning they hacked their way to a clear
space on the ridge at a height of 5,600 feet, and there
they were at last favoured with the view for which
they had longed, and were able to fix the position
of the main peaks.
Looking southward they saw the sea, and between
it and them the dark green of the forest through which
they had struggled for so many months. The gloom
was broken at rare intervals by a streak of light,
which was a river. Nearly five miles away stood
Mount Godman, and beyond it the huge southern
face of the range, a gigantic black cUff, eighty miles
from east to west, with a clear drop of nearly a mile
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 251
and three-quarters — by far the greatest precipice in
the world. Behind this scarp rose the snow moun-
tains — ^Mount Leonard Darwin, to the north-west,
13,882 feet ; and to the north-east Mount Idenburg,
15,379 feet, and the ghttering top of Carstensz,
which is almost 16,000 feet. The great peaks seemed,
below, a mass of wild, black precipices, cleft with
fissures ; but, above, a long, easy snow-field, curving
gently to the summits. It was such a view as the
old Portuguese adventurers might have had when,
after struggling for months through the coastal
jungles, they suddenly came in sight of Kenya or
KiUmanjaro. But for Captain Rawling and his party
it would be no more than a Pisgah-sight. Advance
was impossible. The fatal choice of the Mimika
route meant that they had taken the worst road
conceivable to the great snows. The attainment of
the peaks must be left to their successors. He who
would understand the full difficulties and miseries of
that expedition must read Captain Rawhng's own
narrative.*
Rarely has a more thoroughly comfortless expedi-
tion been undertaken. To begin with, the food was
* The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies, by Captain C. G. Rawling
(Seeley, Service, and Co., 1913).
252 THE LAST SECRETS
bad and unsuitable, for they had the surplus stores
from Shackleton's Antarctic expedition, and the joys
of bully-beef, pea-soup, and pickles under an equa-
torial sky may be imagined. It was impossible to
get good local assistance, for the natives were a pre-
posterous race, treacherous and unreliable when they
were not actively malevolent. They were subject to
sudden panics, when they fled to the jungle, and to
wild outbursts of sorrow, when they would weep
and sob for hours. The imported Javanese were, if
possible, more hopeless. Then there was every kind
of noxious insect — mosquitoes without end, gigantic
leeches dangling from every leaf which made a
speciahty of attacking the eyeballs, ticks, stinking
caterpillars, immense blue-bottles which swarmed in
clouds over any food left uncovered, crickets which
ate a man's clothes up in a night, and a plague of
minute bees which settled in mjrriads on the heated
face of the traveller. Above all, there was the rain.
The whole country was water-logged by the flooding
rivers and the incessant deluge. In the dry season
the average rainfall was about two and a half inches
a day ! Mr. Wollaston took the trouble to keep a
meteorological diary, and found that during the first
year rain fell on 330 days, and that on 295 days it
o^<=
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 253
was accompanied by thunder and lightning. Of the
400 men of all races employed during the first year,
12 per cent, died in the country from hardships, and
83 per cent, of the total force was invaUded from New
Guinea. Of the Europeans and natives who landed
during that year, only eleven lasted out the whole
fifteen months of the expedition. Of these eleven,
four were Europeans, four Gurkhas, two Javanese
soldiers, and one a convict. When it is remembered
that eight months is the maximum period allowed by
the Dutch authorities for continued service in New
Guinea, the marvel is that these eleven escaped with
their lives. It was with no regret that Captain
RawUng said farewell to what must be by far the most
unpleasant land on earth. " Wild shrieks had greeted
us on our first arrival in the country, and wild shrieks
echoed down the still reach of the river as the boats
crept towards the sea."
Mount Carstensz still awaits its conqueror. Since
the Rawhng expedition much has been done in the
exploration of the central mountains. In 1913 Mount
Wilhelmina (15,580 feet), of which Dr. Lorentz had
trodden the lower snows, was finally ascended by
Captain Herderschee. In 1 92 1 Captain Kremer reached
254 THE LAST SECRETS
the same summit from the north, and found a means
of crossing the range at a height of 13,480 feet. A
German expedition under Dr. Moszkowski, which was
projected in 1913 to attempt Carstensz from the
north, was stopped by the war. Meantime, in Sep-
tember, 1912, Mr. Wollaston, Captain Rawhng's com-
panion, had returned to New Guinea and ascended the
Utakwa River. Its head waters led him direct to
Carstensz, and by estabhshing a series of depots for
food in the foothills, he was able to reach the main
massif of the mountain. Above 8,000 feet he left
the jungles behind ; but the mountain proved very
difficult, and the rain, as usual, fell without inter-
mission. At 14,200 feet he reached the snow-Hne,
and on February 1, 1913, from a camp above 12,000
feet, he chmbed to 14,866 feet, a thousand feet
or so below the summit. There he was stopped
by an ice fall, and lack of provisions and the
weakness of his party prevented him from finding
a way to turn it. The top of the mountain is
an ice cap which breaks down very sheer on the
south side, and Mr. Wollaston is of opinion that the
easiest ascent would be from the north. This closes
for the present the history of the exploration of
Carstensz.
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 255
For the second story we move east into British
territory. There the general configuration is the
same — swamps near the shore, then a tangled forest,
then a range of inland mountains, though these are
much less conspicuous than the ranges in Dutch
territory, and scarcely rise above 6,000 feet. In 1911
the Hon. Miles Staniforth Smith, who had been Mayor
of Kalgoorhe, and a senator representing West Aus-
tralia in the Commonwealth Parliament, and was at
the time Administrator of Papua, set out across the
centre of the unexplored part of his province to in-
vestigate the sources of the rivers emptying into the
Papuan Gulf. As the travelling was of the roughest,
and the aim was exploration rather than scientific re-
search, the party was kept very small — three white men,
Mr. Staniforth Smith, Mr. Bell, the Chief Inspector
of Native Affairs, and Mr. Pratt, a Staff Surveyor,
together with eleven native poUce and seventeen
carriers. They started from the head of the navigable
waters of the Kikor or Aird River, meaning to push
north to the top of Mount Murray, and then traverse
to the west along the ridge. Mount Murray, which is
some 6,000 feet high, was safely reached, and the
explorers found themselves moving along a high Ume-
stone plateau, much fissured by streams and diversified
256 THE LAST SECRETS
by parallel ranges. They hoped ultimately to reach
the Strickland River, which is a tributary of the great
Fly River, and so complete the rest of their journey
by rafts.
Presently they found such a river running in a deep
gorge, and from certain rapids which had been noted
by earlier explorers, they assumed it to be the Strick-
land. Now began their adventures. The stream
seemed to be a series of wild rapids ; but as the Strick-
land had already been descended in rafts, the risks
appeared to be justifiable, and four rafts were built.
Mr. Staniforth Smith started out first with three pohce
and two carriers, and Mr. Bell and Mr. Pratt arranged to
follow in quick succession with the rest. In two hundred
yards the first raft was upset, but its occupants man-
aged to hang on. Instead of the rapids disappearing
they grew worse, and after four or five wild miles the
party dashed into a timber block. One of the natives
was so seriously injured that he died next morning.
Mr. Staniforth Smith then started to go back along
the river, in the hope of joining his companions, but
found that he was on an island with swift streams
on either side. Next morning the party tried to ford
the river, and with some difficulty succeeded. As
they were cutting a track up a bank they met two of
New Guinea Pygmies contrasted with ordinary Natives.
{By permission of Messrs. Seeley, Service, dk Co.)
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 257
the police, who had lost their rifles, and who informed
them that Mr. Bell and Mr. Pratt were on the other
bank of the river, and that several of the carriers had
been drowned. The party had now been two days
without food, so Mr. Staniforth Smith resolved to
turn and travel down the stream in the hope of finding
smoother water and a native village. They had no
means of making a fire, and in any case there were
no sago or bread-fruit trees in the neighbourhood.
For five and a half days the explorers hacked their
way downstream. During all that time they had no
food of any kind, and no shelter from torrential rains
except a few palm leaves. On the sixth day, after
travelling twenty miles, they saw natives on the
opposite bank. They built a rough raft and managed
to cross. It was just in time, for they were now
utterly exhausted ; but the food which the natives
gave them revived them. Curiously enough, as they
were at their meal the party of Mr. Bell and Mr.
Pratt came out of the jungle. They had, if possible,
sufiEered even worse disasters. Both the white men,
though powerful swimmers, had been nearly drowned,
and seven of the carriers had lost their Uves. They
would certainly have perished had they not had the
luck the day before to shoot a wild pig.
(2,869) 17
268 THE LAST SECRETS
By this time it was clear that whatever stream they
were on it was not the Strickland, for the Strickland
flowed south-west, and this river ran nearly due east.
The natives, who had never seen a white man before,
took them to their village and treated them kindly.
The good repute of the British official throughout
the wilds now stood them in good stead. They hoped
that the river would soon be clear of rapids ; but to
their consternation there was nothing but gorges and
whirlpools for another hundred miles. The stream
was the Kikor in its middle reaches, the same stream
as they had ascended from the coast. It took them
twenty-nine days to pass the hundred miles of gorges,
and during that time they rarely had a full meal.
On one occasion the whole party worked for seven
days without getting anything to eat except a few
handfuls of soup-powder and a few tins of cocoa, saved
from the capsized rafts. They had no matches, so
they had to keep a fire burning day and night. They
slept in caves and under palm leaves, which made no
pretence of keeping out the rain.
By the twenty-ninth day the river seemed smooth
enough for rafts, and the explorers again embarked,
and managed to cover fifty miles without any serious
misadventure. But next day the rapids began again,
THE EXPLORATION OF NEW GUINEA 259
and their two canoes, made of hollow logs, were upset.
They descended the rapids for ten miles, hanging on
to the upturned logs, before they could land. That
night they spent in the rain, without food ; and
starting again at daybreak, they suddenly saw, to
their immense reUef, European tents, and were wel-
comed by an officer of the constabulary, who had
been sent out to look for them. They had reached
the exact spot from which they had struck north to
Mount Murray at the beginning of their journey !
When, two days later, they arrived at the coast, they
had travelled in fifteen weeks approximately 524 miles
through utterly unknown country — 374 miles on foot
and 150 by river.
Mr. Staniforth Smith encountered every misfortune
that can meet the traveller except one — he had no
trouble with the natives. Indeed, by his tact and
patience he made friends everywhere with the bush-
men, and the survivors of the party owed to them their
Uves. By some strange system of bush telegraphy
the repute of the white men was spread from village
to village. It was the one piece of good fortune that
befell the explorers, and it was final in its effect, for
it made the difference between life and death. I do
not know any narrative of exploration which contains
260 THE LAST SECRETS
adventures more desperate than those whirling voyages
on upturned rafts through black ravines ; or that
month when starving men hacked their way through
the jungle along the torrent's bank in a perpetual
tempest of rain.*
* For this journey Mr. Staniforth Smith received in 1923 the gold
medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
IX
MOUNT EVEREST
m
MOUNT EVEREST
[Map, p. 272.)
The Himalaya not only contain the loftiest peaks on
the globe, but can boast at least eighty summits
loftier than those of any other range. The Andes
come next, but their highest point, Aconcagua, is
only 23,060 feet. In the huge mountain land which
bounds India on the north, and which stretches as
great a distance as from the English Channel to the
Caspian, there are more than eighty peaks above
24,000 feet, some twenty above 26,000, and six above
27,000. Mount Everest, the highest, is, according to
the latest measurements, 29,140 feet high. Its true
character was not always recognized. At one time
Chimborazo, in the Andes, was thought to " outsoar
Himalay." In the middle of last century Kanchen-
junga, which fills the eye of the traveller who looks
north from Darjeeling, was believed to be the loftiest
of the world's mountains. At that time officers of
268
264 THE LAST SECRETS
the Indian Government were conducting the great
Trigonometrical Survey, during which they discovered
a summit for which they could find no native name,
and which they labelled Peak XV. In 1852, when the
observations had been worked out, an official rushed
breathlessly into the room of the Surveyor-General
in Calcutta with the news that Peak XV. proved to
be 29,002 feet high, and was therefore the chief
mountain in the world. As its native name was
unknown, it was called after Sir George Everest,
who had been in charge of the survey. The name is
beautiful in itself, and may well stand; though, had
the circumstances been otherwise, there would have
been much to be said for the Tibetan name, " Chomo-
lungmo," which means " Goddess Mother of the
Mountains."
The ascent of Everest was a project which only
slowly entered into men's minds. When the great
peak was first discovered mountaineering was stiU in
its infancy, and for a generation afterwards climbers
were preoccupied with the Alps. Then mountaineers
began to look farther afield, and first the Caucasus
and then the Andes were conquered, till some thirty
years ago the ambitious began to turn their eyes to
the Himalaya. Gradually the Hmit of achievement
MOUNT EVEREST 266
on high snows was extended. On Trisul, Dr. Long-
staff in ten and a half hours ascended from 17,450 feet
to the summit of 23,360 feet. On Kamet, Mr. Charles
Meade took coolies up to a camp of 23,600 feet. The
Duke of the Abruzzi, after his ascent of Ruwenzori,
attacked, with a splendidly equipped party, K^, that
icy lump in the Karakoram, the second highest of
the world's mountains, and reached a height of 24,600
feet, which, till the year 1921, remained the world's
record. In 1920 Dr. Kellas found that on reasonable
snow he could ascend at a rate of 600 feet an hour
above 21,000 feet. It was inevitable that, when the
Great War was over, lovers of high places should fix
their thoughts on Everest.
It had long been a dream of mountaineers. Lord
Curzon, when Viceroy of India, had suggested the
exploration of Everest to the Royal Geographical
Society and the Alpine Club. But there were political
difficulties connected with the journey through Tibet
or Nepal, and even a reconnaissance of the mountain
proved impossible. Cecil Rawhng (who fell at the
Third Battle of Ypres as a Brigadier-General with the
21st Division), during his journey in 1904 to the head
waters of the Brahmaputra, saw for the first time,
from a distance of sixty miles, the north side of
266 THE LAST SECRETS
Everest, and believed that it might be climbed. I
well remember how in the year before the war he
and I planned an expedition which was to cover two
seasons, and explore that northern side. In March,
1919, Captain Noel urged the Royal Geographical
Society to undertake the work, and Sir Francis
Younghusband, the President of the Society in the
following year, in conjunction with the Alpine Club,
entered into negotiations with the Government of
India. Permission was obtained from the Tibetan
authorities, and in January 1921 a Joint Committee
of the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine
Club proceeded to organize an expedition.
There were many to ask what was the use of such
an enterprise, which would be costly, difficult, and
certainly dangerous. The answer is that it was no
earthly use, and that in that lay its supreme merit.
The war had called forth the finest quaUties of human
nature, and with the advent of peace there seemed
a risk of the world slipping back into a dull material-
ism. Men had begun to ask of everything its cash
value, and to cherish, as if it were a virtue, a narrow
utiUtarian common sense. To embark upon some-
thing which had no material value was a vindication
of the essential idealism of the human spirit. In Sir
MOUNT EVEREST 267
Francis Younghusband's words, " The sight of cUmbers
struggHng upwards to the supreme pinnacle would
have taught men to lift their eyes to the hills — to
raise them ofE the ground and divert them, if only
for a moment, to something pure and lofty and satisfy-
ing to that inner craving for the worthiest which
all men have hidden in their souls. And when they
see men thrown back at first, but returning again and
again to the assault, till, with faltering footsteps and
gasping breaths, they at last reach the summit, they will
thrill with pride. They wiU no longer be obsessed
with the thought of what mites they are in comparison
with the mountains — ^how insignificant they are beside
their material surroundings. They will have a proper
pride in themselves, and a well-grounded faith in the
capacity of spirit to dominate material."
These are almost the words of Theophile Gautier's
defence of mountaineers : "lis sont la volonte pro-
testante contre I'obstacle aveugle, et ils plantent sur
r inaccessible le drapeau de I'intelligence humaine."
If the cUmber wants a further statement of his creed
let it be that of Mr. Belloc, when he first saw the Alps
from the ridge of the Jura. " Up there, the sky above
and below them, the great peaks made communion
between that homing, creeping part of me which
268 THE LAST SECRETS
loves vineyards, and dances, and a slow movement
among pastures, and that other part which is only
properly at home in Heaven. . . . These, the great
Alps, seen thus, Hnk one in some way to one's immor-
tality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest,
these few fifty miles and these few thousand feet ;
there is something more. Let me put it thus : that
from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it were,
my religion. I mean humility, the fear of death,
the terror of height or of distance, the glory of God,
the infinite potentiaUty of reception, whence springs
that divine thirst of the soul ; my aspiration also
towards completion and my confidence in the dual
destiny. For I know that we laughers have a gross
cousinship with the most high, and it is this constant
and perpetual quarrel which feeds the spring of merri-
ment in the soul of a sane man. Since I could now
see such a wonder, and it could work such things in
my mind, therefore some day I should be part of it.
That is what I feel. That it is also which leads some
men to climb mountain-tops, but not me, for I am
afraid of slipping down." *
And now for the great mountain itself. First of
all, it is a rock peak. All the upper part is a great
• The Path to Rome.
MOUNT EVEREST 269
pyramid of stone, with three main aretes — the West,
the South- West, and the North-East. It lies exactly
on the frontier between Tibet and Nepal, and from
the Nepalese side and the plains of India it is hard to
get a good view of it, for only a wedge of white is
seen peeping between and over other peaks. On
the Tibetan side, however, it stands clear, and its
pre-eminence over its neighbours is patent. Now, in
all attacks upon a great peak the first question is
how to get to it — a problem most difficult in the case
of other Himalayan summits like K^, and of peaks
like Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Robson
in Canada. It is not only the question of the climbers
getting there, but of transporting the food and tents
and accessories required by a well-equipped expedi-
tion. Had the only route to Everest lain through
the deep-cut gorges of Nepal, the transport problem
might have been insuperable. But here came in the
value of Tibet, which is a high plateau, averaging
twelve or thirteen thousand feet. It was possible to
take a large party, with baggage animals, up through
the passes of Sikkim to the Kampa Dzong (Kampa
Jong), and then westwards along the north side of the
range to a base camp at Tingri Dzong, due north of
the mountain. Everest itself would be forty or fifty
270 THE LAST SECRETS
miles from such a base camp, but there was a clear
road to it by the upper glens and glaciers of the
Arun, which flows north and east before it turns south
and cuts its way through the Himalayan waU.
The problem of access to the base was, therefore,
not a hard one. The problem of the ascent was two-
fold — part physiological, part physical. Could human
beings survive at an altitude of 29,000 feet — human
beings who were forced to carry loads and to move
their Umbs ? Aviators, of course, had risen to greater
heights, but they had not been compelled to exert
themselves. Could a man in action support life in
that rarified air ? Above 20,000 feet a cubic foot of
air contains less than haK the oxygen which it holds
at sea-level. As the working of the body depends
upon the oxygen suppUed through the lungs, this
fact was bound to lessen enormously man's physical
energy. On the other hand, it had been found that
the human frame could adapt itself to great altitudes
by increasing the number of red blood corpuscles.
Dr. Kellas had been able to cHmb 600 feet an hour
above 21,000 feet, and Mr. Meade had camped in
comparative comfort at 23,600 feet. Still, the highest
altitude yet reached had been only 24,600 feet, and
no one could say what difference the extra 4,500 feet
MOUNT EVEREST 271
might make. Clearly, before the final climbing began
it would be necessary to acclimatize the party. In
the last resort oxygen might be artificially suppHed
to the chmbers. The physiological problem was of
the kind which could only be solved in practice.
The second was the physical. A man might Uve
and even move slowly above, say, 26,000 feet, but it
was quite certain that no human being would be
capable of the severe exertions required by difficult
climbing. If the last stage of Everest proved to be
like the last stages of many Himalayan mountains,
then the thing was strictly impossible. The hope
was that on the Tibetan side the aretes might be
easy going. It aU depended upon finding an easy
route, and being able to make an ultimate camp at
some point like 26,000 feet. There was good hope
that the first might be possible, judging from Raw-
ling's survey at a distance of sixty miles and the known
geographical features of the Tibetan side of the range.
The other physical difficulties would be the gigantic
scale of Himalayan obstacles, the hugeness of the
ice-fields and glaciers, the immensity of the rock-falls
and avalanches. Also at a great height there would
be the bitter cold to lower vitality, and the hkelihood
of violent winds. Much would depend on the weather,
272 THE LAST SECRETS
which was still an unknown quantity. Indeed, all
the physical factors were in the region of speculation ;
only a reconnaissance could determine them. It
might be that the expedition would have to turn back
at once, confessing its task impossible.
General Bruce, who was the chief living authority
on Himalayan travelling, was unable to accompany
the party, so Colonel Howard-Bury was selected as
leader. An elaborate scientific equipment was pre-
pared, and steps were taken to get the full scientific
value out of the journey. But the primary object
was mountaineering : first a reconnaissance, and then,
if fortune favoured, an effort to reach the summit.
The four cUmbers chosen were Mr. Harold Raeburn,
who, in 1920, had done good work on the spurs of
Kanchenjunga ; Dr. Kellas, who had reached 23,400
feet on Kamet; and two younger men, Mr. George
Leigh Mallory and Mr. Bullock, distinguished members
of the Alpine Club, who had been together at Win-
chester. In India they were to be joined by Major
Morshead and Major Wheeler, of the Indian Survey.
Early in May 1921, the party assembled at DarjeeUng.
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MOUNT EVEREST 273
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The start from Darjeeling was on 18th May. The
first stage through Sikkim, and by way of the Chumbi
valley to the Tibetan plateau, was over familiar
ground, which need not be described. There was a
good deal of trouble with the mules, which had been
badly chosen, but no incident of importance happened
till Dochen was reached, the point where their road
left the main road to Lhasa. At Kampa Dzong, Dr.
Kellas died suddenly from heart failure — an irrepar-
able loss to the expedition, for he had been one of the
mountaineers from whom most was looked for, and
he was the only member of the party quahfied by
his medical knowledge to carry out experiments in
oxygen and blood pressure. There, too, Mr. Raeburn
fell sick, and had to return to Sikkim.
The expedition made its way almost due west be-
hind the main chain of the Himalaya, until one even-
ing its members saw, almost due south of them, a
beautiful peak which was apparently very high. The
natives called it Chomo-Uri, which means the " Goddess
of the Turquoise Peak," and from observations next
morning it was clear that it was Everest. They passed
some wonderful monasteries perching on the face of
(2.869) 18
274 THE LAST SECRETS
perpendicular crags, and eventually, on 19th June,
they reached Tingri Dzong, after a month's travelling
from Darjeeling. This was the spot they had decided
upon for their base camp.
The obvious route to Everest seemed to be by way of
the Rongbuk valley, where the great Rongbuk Glacier
flowed from its northern face. There, accordingly,
the two climbers, Mr. Mallory and Mr. Bullock, estab-
Hshed themselves. The preliminary reconnaissance,
however, proved to be a somewhat intricate matter.
It was soon plain that there were no easy approaches
from the west, so Colonel Howard-Bury moved
his headquarters to Kharta, on the east side, close
to the Arun. That river, which there is about one
hundred yards wide, a Httle farther down enters
great gorges, in which, within a course of twenty
miles, it drops from 12,000 feet to 7,500 feet, or over
200 feet in a mile — a far more wonderful spectacle
than anything on the Brahmaputra.
On 2nd August, Mr. Mallory and Mr. Bullock started
their exploration of the eastern approaches to the moun-
tain. This was no easy business, for the valleys were
separated by ridges, the lowest point of which was
higher than any mountain in Europe, and every route
had to be explored personally, for no information
MOUNT EVEREST 275
could be had from the natives. The two main valleys
running down on the east side of Everest are the
Kharta and, farther south, the Kama. The latter
valley was first explored, and it was found that it
ended under the precipitous eastern face of the
mountain, and that there was no way from it of
reaching the North-East ridge. It was a marvellous
valley for scenery, but for mountaineering imprac-
ticable.
A move was accordingly made to the Kharta valley to
the north. Mr. Mallory and Mr. Bullock proceeded up
this till they reached the glacier of the Kharta River,
and at last found a valley which seemed to lead them
straight to the North-East ridge. It was now, how-
ever, early August, the monsoon was blowing, and
everywhere there was deep, soft, fresh snow. They
returned accordingly to the camp at Kharta to wait
till weather conditions became better.
What was called the Advance Base Camp was
established in the Kharta valley at a height of 17,350
feet, in a grassy hollow well sheltered from the wind,
and amid a glory of Alpine flowers. Meantime Mr. Mal-
lory and Mr. Bullock spent their time in carrying wood
and stores to a camp higher up the valley. This was
finally established at a height of some 20,000 feet,
276 THE LAST SECRETS
well up the Kharta Glacier. At the glacier head was
a pass called the Lhakpa La, or " Windy Gap," and
the next step was to form a camp there at a height of
22,350 feet. It was in this neighbourhood that the
tracks, probably of a wolf, were found, which the
cooUes attributed to the " Wild Men of the Snows."
From the Lhakpa La the mountaineers were now
looking straight at Everest, and at last were able to
unriddle its tangled topography. The attention of
the reader is called to the map. It will be seen that
the great Rongbuk Glacier, which descends from the
western side of the northern face, receives as a feeder
the East Rongbuk Glacier. The entrance to the latter
is so small that Mr. Mallory and Mr. Bullock had failed
to notice it in their exploration of the main glacier.
This lesser Rongbuk Glacier ends on the eastern part
of the northern face of the mountain, and between
its head and that of the main glacier is the pass called
the Chang La, or North Col. From the Lhakpa La
one looks mto the East Rongbuk Glacier with the
North Col straight in front. If the North Col could be
attained, it seemed to the mountaineers to be possible,
by working up the easy northern face, to attain the
North-East ridge at a point above the main difficulties.
The camp on the Lhakpa La was not a comfortable
MOUNT EVEREST 277
place, with a howling wind, 34 degrees of frost, and
Httle stuffy tents which gave dubious protection and
inevitable headaches. It was decided that the two
expert Alpine climbers, with a few picked coolies,
should alone attempt the North Col, and, if fortune
favoured, prospect the farther route, while the others
returned to the 20,000-feet camp.
We are now concerned with the doings only of Mr.
Mallory and Mr. Bullock, who were to attempt the
North Col. In the weeks since their arrival in the
neighbourhood of Everest they had been studying
its contours with the eyes of trained mountaineers.
They saw that it was a great rock mass, " coated often
with a thin layer of white powder, which is blown
about its sides, and bearing perennial snow only
on the gentler ledges and on several wide faces less
steep than the rest." They saw that from the point
of the North-East shoulder a more or less broad arete
fell northward to the snow col called the Chang La. If
they could reach that snow col the road to the North-
East ridge looked reasonably simple. They had seen
that the Chang La would be very difficult of attain-
ment from the Rongbuk Glacier, and that was why
they had turned their minds to an eastern approach.
Here is their conclusion, in Mr. Mallory's words,
278 THE LAST SECRETS
reached about the third week in July : "If ever the
mountain were to be climbed, the way would not lie
along the whole length of any one of its colossal
ridges. Progress could only be made along com-
paratively easy ground, and anything like a prolonged
sharp crest or a series of towers would inevitably
bar the way, simply by the time it would require to
overcome such obstacles. But the North arete, com-
ing down to the gap between Everest and the North
Peak, Changtse, is not of this character. From the
horizontal structure of the mountain there is no
excrescence of rock pinnacles in this part, and the
steep walls of rock which run across the north face
are merged with it before they reach this part, which
is comparatively smooth and continuous, a bluntly
rounded edge. . . . The great question before us now
was to be one of access. Could the North Col be
reached from the east, and how could we attain this
point ? "
We have seen the two climbers as far on their
journey as the Lhakpa La, looking over the East
Rongbuk Glacier to the North Col. The chief diffi-
culty, it was soon evident, would be the wall under
the col, which must be over 500 feet high, and appeared
to be very steep.
MOUNT EVEREST 279
On the morning of 23rd September, Mr. Mallory, Mr.
Bullock, and Mr. Wheeler started from the camp on
the Lhakpa La with ten cooUes, some of whom were
mountain-sick, and all of whom were affected by the
height. They started late, and resolved to make an
easy day, pitching their tents that night in the open
snow under the North Col. They had looked for a
sheltered camp, but the place proved to be a temple
of the winds, and no one that night had much sleep.
Next morning, the 24th, a few hours after sunrise,
they began to climb the slopes under the wall, and
found them easier than they had feared. By 11.30
the party was on the col. Only three coolies had
accompanied them, two of whom were already very
tired. Of the three sahibs, only Mr. Mallory was in
anything Uke good condition. The place was scourged
by icy blasts, and frequently in a whirl of powdery
snow, but there could be no doubt that the arete in
front of them was accessible. In that gale, however,
they dare not attempt it, so they struggled back to
their camp below the wall. Next morning, the 25th,
a council of war was held. It was clear that they
must either go on or go back. In their plan they
had dreamed of making a camp at 26,000 feet, but
that was now out of the question. It was too late
S80 THE LAST SECRETS
in the season, the weather was too bad, and the party
was too weak. There was nothing for it but to return,
and accordingly they struggled over the Lhakpa La,
back to the Kharta valley and the road to England.
The reconnaissance of 1921 had established certain
facts of the first importance. The first was as to the
proper season for the attempt. The rainfall in the
Himalaya that year was abnormal, and the monsoon
began and finished later than usual. But it was clear
that between its end and the coming of winter there
was not sufficient time to give the climbers a chance
of good weather. The next attempt must obviously
be made before the coming of the monsoon — that is,
in May or June. The second fact estabUshed was
the best way of attempting the summit. The only
feasible route lay from the Chang La up the subsidiary
ridge to the shoulder of the North-East arete. The
distance from the Chang La to the top was not more
than two miles, and the rise not more than 6,000
feet. So far as the climbers on the pass could judge
— and their conclusion was supported by numerous
photographs from other points — there seemed to be
no very great difficulties on this route in the shape
of steep rocks. It looked as if it might be practicable
MOtJNT EVEREST 281
to find a site for a camp at about 26,000 feet. By
this route the North-East arete would be reached at
about 28,000 feet. The thousand feet from that
point to the summit looked slightly more difficult,
and appeared to possess certain rock towers, which,
however, might be circumvented. The actual top
seemed to be a cap of snow with a steep blunt edge
on the side of the ridge.
The transport question must always be difficult.
The thousand feet from the East Rongbuk Glacier
to the Chang La, half of which was very steep, might
give trouble to laden coolies, especially earHer in the
season when the ice was uncovered by snow. An
advanced base camp on the Chang La would, of course,
be essential if a high camp were to be made at 26,000
feet. But the physical problem might be regarded
as solved — at any rate as far as the shoulder of the
North-East arete. On the physiological question little
light had been thrown. The climbers in September
1921 were aU more or less tired from spending long
periods in high camps, and could not be regarded
as at the top of their form. Yet in the case of most
members of the party the process of acclimatization
had been rapid, and Mr. Mallory on the Chang La was
remarkably fit. What would happen, however, at
282 THE LAST SECRETS
the higher altitudes ? The effect of these upon the
human body had not been decided.
The conclusion from the year's work was that while
no insuperable difficulty had been proved in the
problem, yet for success there must be a combina-
tion of happy chances in the shape of weather, the
condition of the snow, the endurance of the trans-
port coolies, and the bodily fitness of the climbers.
A second attempt would be justified, but it could not
be regarded with anything like confidence. The
enterprise was seriously and responsibly envisaged,
and no better expression of the spirit of those who
undertook it can be found than in Mr. Mallory's own
words : "It might be possible for two men to struggle
somehow to the summit, disregarding every other
consideration. It is a different matter to climb the
mountain as mountaineers would have it cUmbed.
Principles, time-honoured in the Alpine Club, must, of
course, be respected in the ascent of Mount Everest.
The party must keep a margin of safety. It is not
to be a mad enterprise, rashly pushed on regardless
of danger. The ill-considered acceptance of any and
every risk has no part in the essence of persevering
courage. A mountaineering enterprise may keep
sanity and sound judgment, and remain an adventure.
MOUNT EVEREST 283
And of all principles to which we hold, the first is
that of mutual help. What is to be done for a man
who is sick or abnormally exhausted at these high
altitudes ? His companions must see to it that he
is taken down at the first opportunity, and with an
adequate escort ; and the obligation is the same
whether he be sahib or coohe. If we ask a man to
carry our loads up the mountain, we must care for
his welfare at need."
Ill
The 1922 party had as its leader Brigadier-General
the Hon. C. G. Bruce, the supreme authority upon the
Himalaya, to the exploration of which he had devoted
much of his life. He knew the hill people, too, as
no other man knew them, and his advice was invalu-
able in the selection of porters. The climbers were
Mr. Mallory, Mr. Finch (who had been selected for
the expedition of the year before, but had been unable
to accompany it), Mr. Norton, and Mr. Somervell — all
of whom were trained mountaineers ; and Captain
Geoffrey Bruce, who had never done any serious
climbing before. Major Morshead was also of the
party. The 1921 expedition had discovered what
284 THE LAST SECRETS
seemed a possible route to the summit by the North
Col, and the new expedition proposed to follow its
tracks. It was stronger in 'personnel than its pre-
decessor, and much stronger in equipment, for it had
learned many lessons from the experiences of the year
before. Among other things, it carried a supply of
oxygen in bottles, and the necessary apparatus to
use it.
The party, being resolved to make the attempt before
the monsoon broke, made straight for the old advanced
base camp in the Kharta valley. Thanks to General
Bruce's consummate skill in the organization of moun-
tain travel, it reached that point on the date fixed
and with everybody in good health. The next duty
was to estabhsh an advanced camp one stage before
the North Col, up to which porters could be brought
without undue fatigue. The summit of the Lhakpa
La was abandoned, and an advanced base, known
as Camp No. 3, was established under the west side
of the pass, close to the East Rongbuk Glacier.
The next step was to ascertain whether the road to
the North Col was practicable, for when Mr. Mallory's
party had travelled it the year before there had been
fresh snow, and at this early season there was a danger
of bare ice. Mr. Somervell and Mr. Mallory, on 13th
MOUNT EVEREST 285
May, with one coolie, set forth from Camp No. 3 on a
reconnaissance, and found that the route they had
followed the year before was one sheet of glittering
ice. They saw, however, that they could cut their
way into a corridor filled with good snow, which would
lead them up to the foot of the final slope, and that
final slope proved also to be snow and not ice. On
the North Col they found a difficulty they had not
looked for. Between the point at which they reached
it and Everest itself was an ice clifif, which the year
before they had circumvented. Now they found their
way barred by a hopeless crevasse. Ultimately they
discovered a route at the far end of the ice clifiE, and
reached the level snow from which the north ridge of
Everest springs.
The next few days were occupied in bringing up
suppHes to Camp 4 on the North Col. They had only
nine porters available, and this decided them that
it would not be feasible to make two camps on the
face of the mountain. They resolved to attempt to
make one camp at about 26,000 feet, and from that
to make their final effort.
On the 19th the four climbers, Mr. Mallory, Mr. Norton,
Major Morshead, and Mr. Somervell, left Camp 3 at a
quarter to nine in the morning, and an hour after mid-
286 THE LAST SECRETS
day were busy putting up tents and arranging stores at
Camp 4 on the North Col. The sun set at 4.30, and
they turned in for the night in the best of spirits.
On the morrow they proposed to carry up two of
the small tents, two double sleeping-sacks, food for
a day and a half, cooking-pots, and two thermos
flasks. They would make four loads of the stuff,
which would give two porters to each load, with a
man to spare.
On 20th May, Mr. Mallory got up at 5 a.m., and found
that there was no sign of life in the tents in which
the nine porters were quartered. The coolies had
shut themselves in so hermetically that they were all
unwell, and four of them were suffering badly from
mountain-sickness. Only five were able to embark
on the day's work. Breakfast was a slow business,
because everything was frozen hard, and the dish of
spaghetti which they had promised themselves could
only be prepared after an elaborate process of thawing.
A start was made at 7 a.m., and everything went
smoothly at first, for ropes had been fixed between
thei* camp and the col itself, so as to help them on
their return. From the col a broad snow ridge went
up at an easy angle, and all the climbers felt that
bodily fitness which is the assurance of success.
MOUNT EVEREST 287
Then their troubles began. The first was the cold.
The sun had no more warmth in it than a candle, and
a bitter wind began to blow from the west. They came
to an end of the ridge of stones on which they had been
progressing easily, and realized that they must get
some shelter from the wind by moving to the east side
of the shoulder. Step-cutting was now necessary, and
at that height the exertion required was extraordinarily
severe. Moreover, the cold was teUing upon them,
and the porters especially suffered badly. After some
300 feet of steps they rested about noon under the
shelter of some rocks at 25,000 feet.
It seemed to them that they could not get their
loads much higher, and that they had better look out
for a camp, for the porters had to return to the North
Col. But a camping ground was not easy to find.
At last, on the east side of the ridge, they discovered
a steep slab, up to which they could level the ground.
It was a poor place, for the incline was sharp, most of
the floor was composed of broken rocks, and men
lying down would inevitably sUp on top of each other.
There, however, they placed the little tents, each with
its double sleeping-bag, and melted snow for their
makeshift supper. The porters started back for the
North Col, and the climbers, two in each bed, did their
288 THE LAST SECRETS
best to keep warm. All four had suffered a good deal
from the cold. Mr. Norton's ear was badly swollen,
three of Mr. Mallory's jBngers were touched with the
frost, and Major Morshead was chilled to the bone and
clearly unwell.
The wind dropped in the evening, and during the
night fresh snow fell. At 6.50 on the morning of
21st May they crawled from their sleeping-bags and
made a laborious and exiguous breakfast, for only
one thermos flask had turned up. At eight o'clock
they started, none of them feeling their best after
the stuffy, headachy night. Major Morshead was un-
able to go with them, for his illness had increased, and
most regretfully the other three went on without him.
A good deal of fresh snow had fallen, but the first
hours of cUmbing were not very difficult. The worst
trouble was the perverse stratification of the moun-
tain, for all the ledges tilted the wrong way. Slowly
they crawled up, first regaining the ridge by turning
west, and then following the ridge itself in the direc-
tion of the point of the North-East arete. They de-
cided that they must turn back at about two o'clock
if they were to make the descent in reasonable safety.
Besides, they had to consider Major Morshead left
alone in Camp 6.
21^
MOUNT EVEREST 289
At 2.15 they reached the head of the rocks, about
500 feet below the point where the north shoulder
joined the North-East arete. Here they had a clear
view of the summit. The aneroid gave the elevation
as 26,800 feet, but it is possible that it may have
been nearly 200 feet more. Their advance had for
some time been reduced to a very slow crawl, but none
of the party were really exhausted. It was wise,
however, to turn while they had sufficient strength
to get back to Camp 4. They tried moving westward,
where there seemed to be more snow, but they found
that the snow slopes were a series of slabs with an
ugly tilt under a thin covering of new snow ; so they
went back to the ridge and followed their old tracks.
At four o'clock they reached Camp 5, and picked up
Major Morshead and their tents and sleeping-bags.
After that the going became more difficult, as the fresh-
fallen snow had made even easy ground treacherous.
One slip did occur, and the three men were held only
by the rope secured round Mr. MaUory's ice axe.
The descent now became a race with the fast-
gathering darkness. When they got to the snow
ridge they could find no trace of the steps they had
made the day before, and had to cut them over again.
At this point they were in sight of the watchers far below
(2,369) 19
290 THE LAST SECRETS
at Camp 3 on the glacier. Major Morshead \ras suffer-
ing severely and could only move a few steps at a time.
As the night drew in, lightning began to flicker from
the clouds in the west, but happily the wind did not
rise. They were soon at the crevasses and the ice
cUff, and, as the air was calm, it was possible to light
a lantern to guide them. They hunted desperately
to find the fixed rope, which would take them down
to the terrace, where they could see their five tents
awaiting them, but the rope was covered with snow,
and at that moment the lantern gave out. Happily
somebody hooked up the buried rope, and after that
it was plain going to the tents.
They reached them at 11.30, and could find no fuel
or cooking-pots. Their mouths were parched with
thirst, and the best beverage they could concoct
was a mixture of jam and snow with frozen eondensed
milk. Mr. Mallory ascribes to the influence of this stuff
" the uncontrollable shudderings, spasms of muscular
contraction in belly and back, which I suffered in my
sleeping-bag, and which caused me to sit up and
inhale again great whiffs from the night air, as though
the habit of deep breathing had settled upon me
indispensably."
The four men did not waste time next morning on
MOUNT EVEREST 291
the North Col, for they were tormented by thirst and
hunger. It took them six hours to reach Camp 3,
for they had to make a staircase beneath the new
snow which the porters could use, in order to fetch
down their baggage, since they did not intend to
spend the night at Camp 3 without their sleeping-
bags. At midday they were back in comparative
comfort, with certain solid conclusions as the result
of the venture. One was as to the difficulties of new
snow and the precariousness of the weather ; another
was as to the unexpected capacity of the porters.
But the most important was as to the need of oxygen.
They had reached a point very Uttle below 27,000
feet, and that left 2,000 feet to be surmounted
before the summit was reached. For success, a
higher camp was needed than Camp 6, and the men
who started from it must, if possible, have an extra
stimulus to counteract the malign effects of altitude.
If Everest chose to clothe itself with air containing
less oxygen than a man needed, the defect must be
supphed. If a climber used extra clothes to counteract
the cold, he must use some extra device to supplement
the atmosphere.
292 THE LAST SECRETS
IV
We come now to the second attempt of 1922, in
which oxygen was used. Certain eminent scientists
at home had held that Everest could never be con-
quered without its aid, and the expedition had brought
a very full equipment — oxygen stored in light steel
cylinders, and a somewhat complex apparatus for its
use. There had been oxygen drill parades among the
party, and perhaps it might have been well had they
used it straight away for one main attempt, instead
of making the first effort without it. Unfortunately
the apparatus needed overhauling, and it was not till
22nd May, when Mr. Mallory and his party were coming
down from the mountain, that four sets were ready
for use. As to the legitimacy of such a device in
mountaineering, Mr. Finch's arguments are final.
" Few of us, I think, who stop to ponder for a brief
second, will deny that our very existence in this
enlightened twentieth century, with all its amenities
of modern civiUzation is ... ' artificial.' Most of us
have learned to respect progress, and to appreciate
the meaning and advantages of adaptabihty. For
instance, it is a fairly firmly established fact that
warmth is necessary to life. The mountaineer, acting
MOUNT EVEREST 293
on this knowledge, conserves, as far as possible, his
animal heat by wearing especially warm clothing.
No one demurs ; it is the commonsense thing to do.
He pours his hot tea from a thermos bottle — and never
blushes ! Nonchalantly, without fear of adverse criti-
cism, he doctors up his insides with special heat- and
energy -giving foods and stimulants ! From the sun's
ultra-violet rays and the wind's bitter cold he boldly
dares to protect his eyes with Crookes' anti-glare
glasses. Further, he wears boots that to the average
layman look ridiculous ! The use of caffeine, to
supply just a Uttle more buck to an almost worn-out
frame, is not cavilled at, despite its being a synthetic
drug, the manufacture of which involves the employ-
ment of complicated plant and methods. If science
could prepare oxygen in tabloid form, or supply it
to us in thermos flasks that we might imbibe it like
our hot tea, the stigma of ' artificiality ' would, per-
haps, be effectually removed. But when it has to be
carried in special containers, its whole essence is held
to be altered, and, by using it, the mountaineer is
taking a sneaking, unfair advantage of the mountain !
In answer to this grave charge, I would remind the
accuser that, by the inhalation of a little life-giving
gas, the climber does not smooth away the rough
294 THE LAST SECRETS
rocks of the mountain, or still the storm ; nor is he
an Aladdin who, by a rub on a magic ring, is wafted by
invisible agents to his goal. Oxygen renders available
more of his store of energy, and so hastens his steps,
but it does not, alas ! fit the wings of Mercury to his
feet. The logic of the anti-oxygenist is surely faulty."
On 20th May, Mr. Finch and Captain Geoffrey Bruce
arrived at Camp 3, accompanied by Tejbir, one of the
four Gurkha non-commissioned officers lent to the ex-
pedition. There they found the oxygen apparatus
in bad condition, and had to tinker at it for four days.
During this period they made a trial trip to Camp 4
on the North Col, using oxygen. A good deal of new
step-cutting had to be done, for fresh snow had fallen,
but in spite of that, the oxygen enabled them to get
to the col in three hours and to return in fifty minutes,
with halts to take three dozen photographs.
On 24th May, Mr. Finch, Captam Bruce, Captain
Noel, the official photographer, and Tejbir, with twelve
porters, went up to the North Col and camped for
the night. Next morning, the 25th, brought a clear,
windy sky, and at eight o'clock the twelve porters,
with the camp outfit, provisions for one day, and
the oxygen cylinders, started up the North ridge, fol-
lowed an hour and a half later by Mr. Finch, Captain
MOUNT EVEREST 295
Bruce, and Tejbir, each carrying a load of over thirty
pounds. All fifteen used oxygen. It was their in-
tention to make a camp above 26,000 feet ; but after
one o'clock the wind freshened and snow began, so
it was deemed advisable, in order to ensure the safe
return of the pcirters to the North Col, to camp at
25,500 feet. The camping place was no better than that
which Mr. Mallory had found ; the place was on the
actual crest of the ridge, for the west side was scourged
by wind, and there was no good position on the east
side. The tent was pitched on a little platform on
the edge of precipices falling to the East Rongbuk
Glacier, 4,000 feet below. The tent was secured as
well as possible by guy-ropes ; but when the chmbers
got into their sleeping-bags it was both blowing and
snowing hard, and minute flakes filled the tent. Snow
was melted, and a tepid meal was cooked — a really
warm meal was out of the question, for at that altitude
water boils at so low a temperature that a man can
hold his hand in it without discomfort.
As the night closed in, the two climbers com-
forted themselves with the assurance that next day
they would get to the top. But after sunset the wind
increased to a gale so furious that even the ground
sheet with the three men lying on it was hftcd com-
206 THE LAST SECRETS
pletely ojGF the earth. They blocked up the small
openings as well as they could, but before midnight
everything inside was covered with spindrift. It was
impossible to sleep. They had to be constantly on the
watch to prevent the flaps being torn open and to
hold the tent down ; for they reaUzed that if once the
gale got hold of their shelter the whole outfit would be
blown on to the glacier below.
Few adventurers have ever spent a more awful
night. Tejbir had all the placidity of his race, and
Captain Bruce, who was making his first serious
mountaineering expedition on the highest of the
world's mountains, was as cheerful as if he had been
sleeping in an ordinary Alpine cabane. Here is
Mr. Finch's own description : —
*' By one o'clock on the morning of the 26th the gale reached
its maximum. The wild flapping of the eanvas made a
noise like that of machine-gim fire. So deafening was it
that we could scarcely hear each other speak. Later there
came interludes of comparative lull, succeeded by bursts of
storm more furious than ever. During such lulls we took it
in turn to go outside to tighten up slackened guy-ropes,
and also succeeded in tying down the tent more firmly with
our Alpine rope. It was impossible to work in the open for
more than three or four minutes at a stretch, so profound
was the exhaustion induced by this brief exposure to the
fierce cold wind."
MOUNT EVEREST 297
Morning broke with no lull in the violence of the
elements. They prepared a make-shift meal, and
spent the forenoon hours in desperate anxiety. At
midday the storm seemed to reach the summit of its
fury, and matters were made more awkward by a
stone cutting a great hole in the tent. Mercifully
an hour later the wind suddenly dropped, and the
anxious occupants of the tent could prospect the
weather.
The sensible thing would have been to make a
retreat to the North Col, but there was no thought of
giving up. The party were unanimous in resolving
to hang on and make the attempt the following day.
With the last of their fuel they cooked supper — a
frugal meal, for, since they had only carried provisions
for one day, they were now on very short rations.
As they settled down for the night voices were heard
outside, and the porters from the North Col appeared,
bringing thermos flasks of hot beef-tea and tea, sent
by Captain Noel. In a Httle more comfort they tried
to sleep. All three, however, were strained and weak
from their labours of the past twenty-four hours,
and they felt a numbing cold creeping up their limbs.
Mr. Finch had the happy inspiration to use oxygen,
and so arranged the apparatus that each could breathe
298 THE LAST SECRETS
a small quantity throughout the night. " The result
was marvellous. We slept well and warmly. When-
ever the tube delivering the gas fell out of Bruce's
mouth as he slept, I could see him stir uneasily in the
eerie greenish light of the moon as it filtered through
the canvas. Then, half unconsciously replacing the
tube, he would fall once more into a peaceful slumber."
Next morning, the 27th, they woke well and hungry,
and after a struggle with thdr boots, which were frozen
stiff, started off at 6.30, Captain Bruce and Mr. Finch
carrjdng each over forty pounds, and Tejbir some fifty
pounds. Their plan was to takse Tejbir as far as the
North-East shoulder, and there to reheve him of his
load and send him back. It was cold clear weather, and
the wind was not too strong. Presently, however,
it began to freshen, and after they had gained a few
hundred feet it was Tejbir who showed the first signs
of weakness. He collapsed entirely, and had to be
relieved of his cyhnders and sent back. The height '
was about 26,000 feet, the highest point which any
native had yet reached.
In order to move more quickly, Mr. Finch and Captain
Bruce dispensed with the rope. The rocks were quite
easy, and at 26,500 feet they had passed two admirable
sites for a camp. But the wind was steadily increasing
MOUNT EVEREST 299
in force, and they were compelled to leave the ridge
and traverse out across the great north face. This
was bad luck, for the ridge was easy climbing and the
face was not. The stratification of the rocks was most
awkward, and it was hard to find any good footholds.
The chmbers were unroped, and it was a severe test
of Captain Bruce, who had had no mountaineering
experience to give him confidence. Sometimes they
were on treacherous slopes, sometimes on more treach-
erous snow, and they often had to cross heaps of scree
that moved with every step. They stopped occa-
sionally to replace an empty cyHnder of oxygen with
a new one, each of which meant five pounds off their
load. Presently the aneroid gave their height as
27,000 feet. They now ceased traversing, and began
to chmb straight upward to a point on the North-East
ridge, half way between the shoulder and the summit.
Soon they were at 27,300 feet, and the top of Everest
was the only mountain they could see without looking
down. The peaks which had seemed so formidable
from the glacier had now sunk into insignificant humps.
They were 1,700 feet below the summit, well within
half a mile of it, and they could distinguish stones
and a patch of scree just under its highest point.
But it was very clear that they could go no farther.
300 THE LAST SECRETS
Weak with hunger and the anxiety and labours of the
past forty-eight hours, it was plain to Mr. Finch that
if they went on even for another 500 feet they would
not both get back aUve. Like wise and brave men
they decided to retreat. It was now about midday,
and for greater safety they roped together. At first
they followed their old tracks, and then moved to-
wards the North ridge at a point higher than where
they had left it. They reached the ridge at two o'clock,
and there reduced their burden by dumping four
oxygen cyUnders at a place to which future cUmbers
could be directed.
The weather was getting worse. A violent wind
from the west was bringing up mist, but happily
there was no snow. Half an hour later they reached
their camp of the night before, where they found
Tejbir sound asleep, wrapped up in all the three
sleeping-bags. The porters from the North Col were
a mile below, and Tejbir was mstructed to go down
with them. The rest of the descent was a nightmare.
The knees of the climbers knocked together, and
their limbs did not seem to respond to the direction
of the brain. Often they staggered and sUpped, and
often they were forced to sit down. But at four o'clock
in the afternoon they reached the North Col. Happily
MOUNT EVEREST 301
they still felt famished ; they had not yet reached
the limit of a man's strength when hunger vanishes.
At the North Col they had hot tea and spaghetti,
and three-quarters of an hour later they started off
for Camp 3 in the company of Captain Noel. The
journey was made in record time — forty minutes —
and at 5.30 they had reached Camp 3, having descended
since midday 6,000 feet.
That evening made amends for the long hours of
famine. " Four whole quails, truffled in pate de foie
grasy followed by nine sausages, left me asking for
more. The last I remember of that long day was
going to sleep, warm in the depths of our wonderful
sleeping-bag, with the remains of a tin of toffee
tucked away in the crook of my elbow."
Captain Bruce's feet were badly frost-bitten, but Mr.
Finch had come off scot-free, which was neither more
nor less than a physical miracle.
As Captain Bruce, on the way down to the base
camp, turned to take his last close view of Everest, his
farewell was : " Just you wait, old thing. You will
be for it soon." It was the logical conclusion. He and
Mr. Finch had got to 27,300 feet after exertions and
deprivations which might well have unfitted a man
302 THE LAST SECRETS
for the ascent ©f the Rigi. These misfortunes were
accidental and not inevitable. The value — ^the super-
lative value — of oxygen had been abundantly proved.
It may be fairly said that the 1922 expedition, though
it had not set foot on the summit, had solved the
secret of Everest. The mountain could almost cer-
tainly be cUmbed, provided a little luck attended the
chmbers. Now that the quaUty of the native porters
has been proved, there seems no reason why, with the
help of oxygen, a sixth camp could not be arranged
on one of the flat places under 27,000 feet which Mr.
Finch noted. A night in such a camp would be no more
trying than a night at 25,000 feet. If the climbers,
starting from 27,000 feet, and, after a good night,
feU in with reasonable weather, there seems Uttle
doubt that the remaining 2,000 feet could be ascended
and the peak conquered, with a good prospect of a
safe return on the same day to the North Col. There
remains, of course, the possibihty of physical break-
down, such as happened to Major Morshead and Tejbir.
But against this may be set the fact that Mr. Mallory,
Mr. Somervell, Mr. Norton, Mr. Finch, and Captain
Bruce, at great altitudes and after severe physical
labour, were not specially distressed, and suffered no
bad effects afterwards.
MOUNT EVEREST 303
The conquest of Everest will always remain one
of the most difficult adventures which man can under-
take. But it is a reasonable adventure, and not a
piece of crazy foolhardiness, which could only succeed
by the help of the one chance in a million. The two
reconnaissance expeditions have shown that for its
achievement every available human resource is neces-
sary. But granted the utilization of these resources,
and the possibiHty, which our familiarity with the
lower slopes may soon permit, of waiting upon a spell
of kindly weather, the ultimate conquest would seem
to be assured. The secret of Everest has been solved.
We know now that there is a way to the top, and we
know what that way is.*
* The Harratives on which the above account is based wUl be
found in Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance (Edwin Arnold, 1921),
and the papers by Mr. Mallory and Mr. Finch in the Alpine Journal of
November, 1922.
THE END.
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