Mountain Journeys 119 



But if these symptoms are so frequent, why not speak of them, 

 or at least why not mention them in accounts which are often so 

 prolix and loaded with uninteresting details? 



In the first place, we must confess, their importance and sever- 

 ity have been so exaggerated that travellers affected only by 

 panting and palpitations are willing to deny even the reality of an 

 illness which they dreaded so much in advance. In this connection, 

 I found an interesting indication in the account of ascents made in 

 August, 1859, of Grivola (3960 meters) by M. Ormsby. 165 He was 

 climbing the "chimney" in a very dangerous position when he had 

 a very strange dizzy feeling, and he adds: 



I had read so many terrible stories of the strange effects of the 

 rarified air on man at great altitudes that I began to be very nervous 

 .... It was the moment to be attacked by apoplexy, catalepsy, 

 bleeding from the eyes or some other of the terrible symptoms. (P. 

 333.) 



In the second place, most of the tourists whose narrations fill 

 the Alpine journals have hardly any scientific interests in their 

 ascents; they climb for the sake of climbing, or seeing, or often of 

 telling that they have climbed and seen. It is generally this last 

 feeling which dictates their accounts, and that is why one sees 

 them every year seeking some horn, spitze, or joch, hitherto inac- 

 cessible or merely forgotten: a virginity often hard to conquer, 

 the sterile conquest of which they will dispute. 



Finally, a point of honor has intervened; they are almost as afraid 

 of being ridiculed for mountain sickness as they are for seasick- 

 ness. Formerly, they sought its symptoms in themselves, they 

 liked to boast of having experienced them, as they would have 

 boasted of a mysterious danger they had risked; today they refuse 

 to observe them, especially to admit them; sometimes they deny 

 them. 



One of the travellers of our period who are most experienced 

 in mountain climbing, Count Henry Russell, 1 ' expresses himself 

 on this point with the greatest clearness and authority: 



I regret to state that some of the most important authorities of the 

 Alpine Club have gone so far as to deny completely a thing like the 

 painful phenomenon known in all countries by the name of "mountain 

 sickness", or they declare it an exception, an effect of fatigue, of 

 exhaustion. It is true that very favored lungs can go to very high 

 altitudes and continue to breathe comfortably. Likewise, there are 

 travellers who are immune to seasickness, and we can therefore deny 

 this sickness as well as the other. Mountain sickness is an ailment 

 which has been felt all over the earth (even in the tropics), in the 



