burial ceremonials, and was evidently quite 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? hein.' 'One man very bad man,' chipped
in an officious convict, but a glance from the offended 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. Returning
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 sanguinary 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, who managed to haul himself hand over hand along a thin
rope. Captain Rawling 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 solid 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
cliff, eighty miles from east to west, with a clear drop of nearly a
mile and three-quarters--by far the greatest precipice in the world.
Behind this scarp rose the snow mountains--Mount Leonard Darwin, to
the north-west, 13,882 feet; and to the north-east Mount Idenburg,
15,379 feet, and the glittering 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 Kilimanjaro. 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
Rawling's own narrative.*
* _The Land of the New Guinea Pygmies_, by Captain C. G. Rawling
(Seeley, Service, and Co., 1913).
Rarely has a more thoroughly comfortless expedition been undertaken.
To begin with, the food was 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 equatorial sky may be
imagined. It was impossible to get good local assistance, for the
natives were a preposterous 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 speciality 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
myriads 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 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 invalided 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 Rawling 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."
[Illustration: New Guinea Canoes. [It was in such canoes that Mr.
Staniforth Smith made part of his journey.] (_By permission of
Messrs. Seeley, Service, & Co._)]
Mount Carstensz still awaits its conqueror. Since the Rawling
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 1921 Captain Kremer reached 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 September, 1912, Mr. Wollaston, Captain Rawling's
companion, had returned to New Guinea and ascended the Utakwa River.
Its head waters led him direct to Carstensz, and by establishing 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 intermission. At 14,200 feet he reached the
snow-line, and on February 1, 1913, from a camp above 12,000 feet, he
climbed 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.
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 Kalgoorlie, and a senator representing
West Australia 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 investigate 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
research, 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 police
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 limestone plateau,
much fissured by streams and diversified 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 Strickland. Now began their adventures. The
stream seemed to be a series of wild rapids; but as the Strickland
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 police 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 managed 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 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.
[Illustration: New Guinea Pygmies contrasted with ordinary Natives.
(_By permission of Messrs. Seeley, Service, & Co._)]
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, suffered even worse disasters. Both the white men,
though powerful swimmers, had been nearly drowned, and seven of the
carriers had lost their lives. They would certainly have perished
had they not had the luck the day before to shoot a wild pig.
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, 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 relief, European tents, and were welcomed 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 bushmen,
and the survivors of the party owed to them their lives. 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 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
MOUNT EVEREST
(_Map_, p. 272.)
I
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 Kanchenjunga, 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 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, "Chomolungmo," 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 still 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 limit of achievement on
high snows was extended. On Trisul, Dr. Longstaff 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, K2, 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
Rawling (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 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 qualities of human nature, and
with the advent of peace there seemed a risk of the world slipping
back into a dull materialism. Men had begun to ask of everything its
cash value, and to cherish, as if it were a virtue, a narrow
utilitarian commonsense. To embark upon something which had no
material value was a vindication of the essential idealism of the
human spirit. In Sir Francis Younghusband's words, "The sight of
climbers struggling upwards to the supreme pinnacle would have taught
men to lift their eyes to the hills--to raise them off the ground and
divert them, if only for a moment, to something pure and lofty and
satisfying 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 will 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: "Ils sont la volonté protestante contre l'obstacle
aveugle, et ils plantent sur l'inaccessible le drapeau de
l'intelligence humaine." If the climber 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 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, link one in some way to
one's immortality. 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
potentiality 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 merriment 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."*
* _The Path to Rome._
And now for the great mountain itself. First of all, it is a rock
peak. All the upper part is a great pyramid of stone, with three
main _arêtes_--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 K2, 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 expedition. 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 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 wall.