Mountain Journeys 153 



me this pleasing complication lasted only a few hours, in the middle 

 of the day, and again intermittently. I noticed that invariably I was 

 better when descending the hills than when ascending them; and that 

 there was a sort of connection between the appearances of the sun 

 and my lucid intervals. 



The sufferings of my Cashmere servant and the merchants of 

 Caubul were evidently much more continual and acute than mine, 

 particularly because of a general disturbance of which they had been 

 complaining since the day before, at the pass of Bara Lacha. 



It was impossible to destroy their absolute belief that all these 

 symptoms were due to the poisonous exhalations from a mysterious 

 plant, the "dewaighas" or "medical herb", which they are sure grows 

 in these regions, although they have never been able to find any .... 



The man from Cashmere was sick two days. P. 137.) 



A few days after, crossing of a still higher pass, that of Tung- 

 lung, which has an altitude of 17,750 feet (5410 meters). The 

 night camp was made at Larsa, at 16,400 feet: 



The aacent of the 1350 feet which we had to climb was very 

 rugged; the slightest effort in this rarified air made our breathing very 

 painful. (P. 141.) 



The account of Semenof 233 is interesting in that it relates to 

 the first journeys made in the high regions of the Celestial Moun- 

 tains. June 25, 1857, after camping at an altitude of 7500 feet, he 

 crossed the pass of Zauku. There thousands of carcasses of camels, 

 horses, oxen, and dogs are to be seen: 



The horse of M. Kosharof broke down .... mine slipped, cut 

 itself deeply, and died at once; two of the horses of the Cossacks 

 were so exhausted that they could not go on ... . The guide assured 

 us that it was so difficult to breathe at the summit of the Zauku Pass 

 that it would be impossible to live there more than an hour and a 

 half. (P. 364.) 



We see, in this statement of the guide, an example of the 

 exaggerations usual in all countries where very lofty places are 

 the exception. Unfortunately, Semenof does not give the altitude 

 of the pass of Zauku. 



But no one could treat this question with more authority than 

 the Schlagintweit brothers, whose expeditions in the lofty regions 

 of Asia are among the most important journeys of this century, 

 and the most fruitful from the point of view of geography, history, 

 and the natural sciences. 



They have devoted a section, in the official account of their 

 journey, 230 to the history of the symptoms of decompression. In 

 it we see that they mounted to the greatest height ever attained by 



