15 



Indians who carried the baggage were getting nervous. As in 

 all mountain regions, the people firmly believed that the 

 uninhabited zone of the mountains was the abode of devils. 

 Every one of the great stones that lay along their present track 

 had, the Indians maintained, been kicked down by a devil. 

 Whenever they heard a rock spring loose and come tumbling 

 from above, they looked up anxiously to see the devil. The 

 theory of these devils was much against rapid progress. 

 Wherever the Indians could they sat down. Sir Martin 

 estimated humorously that they sat down 50 minutes in every 

 hour at this part of the ascent. At last, however, the poor 

 Indians could stand their diabolical surroundings no longer, and 

 at one camp they all ran away, except two, more daring than 

 the rest, who remained for the novel experience of sleeping in a 

 tent. But these also began to be overcome by fears, and hung 

 back when the party came to an extra bad place. " Fortunately 

 I had brought with me a lot of silver coins, and I would go 

 fifteen or twenty yards ahead and hold out a coin, and they 

 would come and get it, and then I would go on a little further 

 and hold out another, and so on, and as we got higher and 

 higher the silver coins had to get bigger and bigger. But 

 finally we came to a very bad place, but they no longer took any 

 interest in dollars, and nothing could get them any higher. 

 And some hours later faint howls of delight came up to us 

 through the still air, telling that they had got safely off the 

 cursed rocks again." 



So Sir Martin Conway and the guides had to do their own 

 carrying now. In these high altitudes the air was so rarefied, 

 and the amount of oxygen breathed at each inspiration so small, 

 that merely to get about was exhausting. Half-an-hour's work 

 in such a light atmospheric pressure fagged one as much as five 

 hours' work at a lower level. Sir Martin had brought away 

 some wonderful mountain views, — seas of cloud, filling the 

 valleys beneath like snow, and cutting off the great peaks " in 

 icy isolation." 



Perseverance had its reward in the discovery of a place 

 where the ice cap, that hung from the snow-field crowning the 

 mountain, sloped down in a steep glacier instead of hanging 

 overhead. Here they made their way up, and, about a quarter 

 of a mile in upon the snow-field, they pitched their highest 

 camp. At two o'clock in the morning they set forth to mount 

 the snow-field to the peak itself. But their difhculties were not 

 yet all over, for they discovered another peak between them and 

 the one at which they were aiming. This they had to cross, and 

 the intervening snow-field, till at last, after one of the most 

 toilsome half-hours in their experience, they mounted the top- 

 most sunnnit of lUimani, and before their eyes, though clouds 



