294 Historical 



ratory and rush to Chamounix; on the first favorable day, they attempt 

 the ascent. Well! I think that they are making their experiment under 

 conditions which are not very scientific. The ascent of Mont Blanc is, 

 after all, very difficult. It requires previous exercise and training. 

 These scholars are likely to confuse the effects of unusual fatigue which 

 finds their muscles unprepared, with those of a rarefied atmosphere. 

 (P. 63.) .... 



It is under these conditions that MM. Marcet of Geneva and Lortet 

 of Lyons made their ascent .... We were in the fourth week of a 

 journey on foot, during which, without resting even one day, we had 

 crossed some of the highest passes of the Alps. (P. 66.) 



Finally M. Russell Killough, 133 whose very astute replies to the 

 skeptics who deny mountain sickness I have mentioned, is less for- 

 tunate in regard to theoretical explanations. He revives, without 

 the slightest proof to support him, either from experiments or rea- 

 soning, the hypothesis of the injurious effect of snow: 



I am ready to agree that altitude is not exclusively the cause of 

 these sufferings. I think, and others have thought before me, that snow 

 is an important factor in the question, because as soon as one touches 

 terra firma, he is relieved. Have we not all observed that on glaciers 

 the air has a metallic taste, like water from melted snow, that it seems 

 polluted, as if the ice and snow poisoned it with their emanations? 

 Why in the tropics, where one walks on grass at an altitude of 18,000 

 feet, are nausea and the desire to sleep, this sort of somnambulism, 

 felt only at much greater heights than in Europe? 



At any rate, whatever the cause may be, this peculiar sickness 

 cannot be denied, and man cannot live at certain altitudes any more 

 than in the depths of the ocean. (P. 244.) 



If we pass from the Alps to the Himalayas, we see modern 

 travellers giving us in their narratives testimony that even in our 

 days the sicknesses of great elevations are attributed by the natives 

 to the influence of plants which are supposed to poison the air from 

 a distance. 



Mistress Hervey 134 refers to it repeatedly: 



These extraordinary attacks on passes of great altitude are at- 

 tributed by the natives to what they call Bischk-Ke-Hawa (Bischk, 

 poison; Hawa, wind) or poisoned wind. They believe that the wind 

 becomes poisoned because it blows over certain plants of the group 

 of mosses, which grow abundantly on the high mountains of Tartary, 

 and are found where vegetation ceases. From the summit of Bara 

 Lacha to Yunnumscutchoo, I saw thousands of them. They have very 

 small yellow flowers, and are of different species. A more scientific 

 explanation of this peculiar illness attributes it to the great rarity of 

 the air at these extreme altitudes. (Vol. I, p. 133.) 



We even see, in several parts of her narrative, and we have 

 quoted some very strange ones in this connection, that she is not 



