13 



WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6th, 1899. 



ffilimbiitr; tb^ ^nlits. 



Sir martin CONWAY, F.R.G.S., &c. 



IT was some eighteen months ago that Sir Martin, who has 

 climbed mountains in many parts of the world, and is a 

 Vice-President of the Alpine Club, set out to seek fresh adven- 

 tures on the hitherto untrodden peaks of the Cordillera Eeal, in 

 the Republic of Bolivia, — the Thibet of South America. The 

 Lecturer commenced the description of his journey at the point 

 where, on the upward way towards the mountains, he and his 

 two Swiss guides set foot on the little steamer that was to carry 

 them across the Lake of Titicaca. This extraordinary lake, 

 many times larger than Geneva, and already some thousands of 

 feet above sea level (though within appreciable distance of the 

 Equator), they crossed with comfort. In so doing they were 

 fortunate, for, as a rule, its waters are agitated by the most un- 

 pleasant storms, so that the voyager suffers not only from the 

 rarefaction of the air, or mountain sickness, but from sea- 

 sickness as well. The combination of the two maladies. Sir 

 Martin assured his audience, was " one of the most insidious 

 forms of illness it is possible to conceive." Moreover, it is the 

 rarest thing to find a person capable of becoming habituated to 

 it. On the Titicaca steamboats passengers and crews are alike 

 prostrated. 



From the Avaters of the lake, across dark intervening moun- 

 tains of lower level, the traveller and his comrades commanded 

 a view of the white towering solitudes they had come to explore, 

 masses of gleaming ice piercing the blue equatorial sky. Mount 

 Sorata towers at the north end of the Cordillera, more than 

 20,000 feet above the sea, while in the giant lUimani, invisible 

 as they approached from the lake, the range culminates at the 

 southern end. Beautiful photographs, of glacier, gorge, and 

 rearing peak, were thrown upon the screen as the lecture pro- 

 gressed. 



Lake Titicaca and the district round about was the original 

 home of the great Inca civilisation. Indians of pure Inca blood 

 still inhabit the region, having the civilisation no longer, but 



