668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN ASCENT AND THE 

 EFFECTS OF RAREFIED AIR. 



By EDWIN SWIFT BALCH. 



IN 1855 the brothers Adolph and Robert Schlagintweit reached 

 an altitude that for many years was unapproached. This 

 was in a partial ascent of the Ibi Gamin or Kamet Mountain 

 on the southern frontier of Tibet. They traveled up a long 

 glacier by easy stages and encamped at gradually increasing ele- 

 "'ations. Their highest camp was 19,360 feet above the sea, and 

 the greatest height they reached on their final effort, 22,250 feet. 



Between the years 1860 and 1865 Mr. W. H. Johnson, of the 

 Indian Survey, reached some very great altitudes in Cashmere, for 

 which he has never had due justice done him. Colonel Mont- 

 gomarie, in receiving from the Royal Geographical Society a 

 reward for Mr. Johnson, made the following statement : " The 

 occasion of Mr. Johnson's (1864) ascending to 22,300 feet was 

 owing to his inability to get at a valley in any other way except 

 by crossing a ridge which reached this altitude. He actually 

 forced his way over, and was obliged to spend the night at nearly 

 22,000 feet above the sea, darkness having come on before he got 

 any lower." In 1865 Mr. Johnson climbed three peaks of the 

 Kuen Lun, one of which, according to the measurement of the 

 Indian Survey by a single observation, however is put down at 

 23,890 feet, Mr. Johnson seems never to have written any account 

 of his ascents, and in the opinion of the Indian Department it 

 was considered as probable that the single unverified determi- 

 nation of height was erroneous rather than that Mr. Johnson 

 should have ascended to nearly 24,000 feet without special diffi- 

 culty, and the determination was therefore omitted in compiling 

 the synopsis of final data for publication. 



In the year 1884 the little world of Alpine climbers was star- 

 tled by the narrative read before the Royal Geographical Society 

 by Mr. W. W. Graham, describing a journey to the Sikhim Hima- 

 laya, in which with Emil Boss, proprietor of the Hotel Bar at 

 Grindelwald, and the well-known guide, Ulrich Kaufmann, he 

 claimed to have reached in the preceding October the height of 

 24,000 feet on Mount Kabru. The whole Anglo-Indian press and 

 Himalayan Survey, prompted by jealousy at an English climber 

 with two Swiss guides leaving their efforts so far behind, with 

 great unanimity attacked Mr. Graham's assertions most bitterly. 

 Their arguments are very curious. One of them was that the 

 Bhooteas, natives of the neighboring valleys, stated that they 

 would not attempt the ascent under any circumstances ; and yet it 

 was argued that if any one could make the ascent it would cer- 



