THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN ASCENT. 669 



tainly be the Bliooteas, for one of the women once carried a grand 

 piano on her back forty-six miles in three days. This is equiva- 

 lent to saying that a hotel porter would be the best guide on a 

 mountain side. One of the Indian surveyors, Mr. Roberts, said it 

 would be impossible to ascend Kabru, " as no one can avoid the 

 almost certain consequences of an attempt to clamber over sharp 

 ledges of rock and of the yielding of the snow coating that covers 

 over a concealed crevasse." What almost certain consequences 

 clambering over sharp ledges of rock should entail, except, per- 

 haps, barking the climber's shins or tearing his knickerbockers, 

 is a still unsolved riddle, and evidently the Indian Survey has 

 never even heard of using a rope on a glacier. 



Then, again, Mr. Graham was attacked about Pandim, a 

 mountain 22,018 feet in height, which the Anglo-Indian press said 

 the natives denied he had ascended. His character for veracity 

 was called in question. The beauty of this attack lay in the fact 

 that he never claimed to have ascended Pandim ; on the contrary, 

 he said in his report : " I do not know of any more formidable 

 peak. On the west side it drops sheer, while the other three are 

 guarded by the most extraordinary overhanging glaciers which 

 quite forbid any attempt." Mr. Graham also announced his dis- 

 covery of two peaks from Kabru, the one a rock peak, the other a 

 snow peak, which seemed higher than Gaurisankar. The Indian 

 Survey taxed this as being no discovery on his part, because the 

 following February a survey party saw peaks which are assumed 

 to be identical with those of Mr. Graham, and which the survey- 

 ors thought would prove higher than any mountain yet measured. 

 Mr. Douglas W. Freshfield, the present secretary of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, aroused by the general foolishness of the 

 Indian Survey, took up the cudgels in behalf of Mr. Graham, and 

 a war on paper resulted in the pretty general acceptance of the 

 reality of his ascent. 



Since Mr. W. M. Conway's exploration in the Karakorums, 

 however, the whole question has been reopened, Mr. Edward 

 Whymper, the first climber of the Matterhorn, coming forward 

 especially on account of his disbelief that any one could reach 

 24,000 feet without extreme suffering from rarefied air. Mr. 

 Graham in his narrative states that neither he nor his Swiss com- 

 panions " suffered any inconvenience from breathing other than 

 the panting inseparable from any great muscular exertion. Head- 

 aches, nausea, bleeding at the nose, temporary loss of sight and 

 hearing, were conspicuous only by their absence ; and the only 

 organ perceptibly affected was the heart, whose beatings became 

 very perceptible, quite audible, while the pace was decidedly in- 

 creased." Mr. Conway, on the contrary, states that " when 18,000 

 feet had been passed, we found that it was well to look to our 



