CHAP. X MOUNTAIN SICKNESS 187 



ascent above the level of i 7,000 feet, when I was not so well 

 as on the first. The difference was probably due to food. 

 Then I had had breakfast of porridge and beans, and felt traces 

 of indigestion and flatulence. On the former occasion I had had 

 no solid food at all, for it was buried beneath a snowslip, and I 

 had only taken some spoonfuls of Schweitzer's cocoatina. 



The only previous occasion when I had any feeling that 

 could be attributed to mountain sickness was during an ascent 

 of Gray's Peak, which, though the highest summit in the Rocky 

 Mountains, is only 14,341 feet high. Owing to the break- 

 down of our transport arrangements, my sister and I had a 

 very fatiguing march of twelve hours, and spent twenty-eight 

 hours without food, except some bread and meat which had 

 gone bad. At the height of 13,000 feet my sister fainted, 

 and I had a little trouble in getting her back to a deserted 

 mining hut. After she had recovered I continued the ascent, 

 but during the last 300 feet was so weak that I had to crawl 

 part of the way on my hands and knees, and on the summit 

 was too exhausted to put up my camera. 



I could never understand why I should have suffered so 

 severely then, while later on, at elevations only a trifle less (as 

 on Pike's Peak and the Tetons), I was only bothered by a 

 feeling of laziness and depression. But when, six months later, 

 Mr. Whymper's account of his illness on Chimborazo was 

 published, I was so struck by the resemblance between our 

 symptoms and his, that I felt bound to accept the illness from 

 which my sister and I then suffered as true mountain sickness. 



In a paper read before the Alpine Club I suggested that 

 its occurrence at this comparatively moderate elevation was due 

 to lack of food. The explanation never quite satisfied me. 

 Professor Roy,^ however, has recently explained Mr. Whymper's 

 illness as due to the fact that some of his tinned meat had gone 

 bad. The same explanation is applicable in our case. The 

 only food we had been able to get in Georgetown was some 

 steak and bread, which we had packed up in the form of sand- 

 wiches. On the way up the meat went bad, and of course also 

 spoilt the bread. We nevertheless ate a little, and our sub- 

 sequent indisposition was therefore probably due to bad food, 

 instead of to lack of food. 



^ C. S. Roy, " Mountain Sickness," Sci. Prog. vol. iii. (1895), p. 92. 



