16 



were gathering, a vast panorama lay stretched for two hundred 

 miles. Standing there, more than 21,000 feet above the sea, 

 they spent an hour planting their little Union Jack, — soon to 

 vanish in the tempests of the mountain top, — and assimilating 

 the sensation of standing where no human foot had stood before. 

 As for the return journey. Sir Martin was very brief. With 

 humour of the American kind he described the return journey of 

 Avhat baggage they had taken to the summit, and no longer 

 required. " We wrapped it all up in a bundle, and rolled the 

 bundle to the edge of an ice guUey. Then we let go, and it 

 slithered down, and soon began to make little jumps along the 

 ice. Then it jumped fifty yards, and then half a mile, and then 

 twenty miles, and then it scattered like a lyddite shell all over 

 the country of Bolivia. When I passed my sleeping bag again 

 on my way down there were eighteen different ways of getting 

 into it." 



Sir Martin shortly described his ascent of Mount Sorata, a 

 similar adventurous journey. For the ascent of Sorata in the 

 higher altitudes they carried up a small sledge, for greater con- 

 venience of conveying the baggage. They found, however, he 

 and his two guides, that it was all their work to get along. Sir 

 Martin made the discovery that by a wise dispensation of Provi- 

 dence no man could pull a sledge and take a photo of himself 

 doing it at the same time. " Therefore, as we got higher, 

 you will see that it became more and more necessary to take 

 photographs." Every now and then they would come to a 

 flat spot, and sit down, and say what a nice thing it was to 

 have a sledge to sit on. When nearing the top of Sorata they had to 

 stop for a snow-storm. They waited a day, but it kept on, and they 

 had to leave their camp and bolt for their base camp as hard as they 

 could. And it was just as well, for that snowstorm lasted three 

 weeks. Then they returned and found their tent, and started 

 for the peak again in the black night. The final slope of Sorata 

 they found most treacherous with the newly-fallen snow. At 

 each step they would sink to the chin, and had to stamp the 

 snow down to get a footing, and all the time they were in 

 imminent peril of creating an avalanche of the loose snow. The 

 last hundred feet or so, which in ordinary circumstances would 

 have only taken about a quarter of an hour, they found quite 

 impossible, and there was nothing to do but turn back. As the 

 peak was covered with clouds they had lost nothing but the 

 sentimental satisfaction of actually standing upon the peak itself. 



