January io, 1901] 



NA TURE 



255 



must be pitched far away from even the smallest of towns ; 

 provisions, wraps, tents, all requisites, must be transported 

 by human labour, which is costly and entails endless 

 difficulties. The misdeeds of porters were once a stock 

 subject of complaint among alpine climbers, but the worst 

 of them are surpassed by Indian coolies, who are ill- 

 fed, ill-clad and without mountain experience, while the 

 native servants, almost universally, are adepts in cheating 

 and mendacity. Through their misconduct one expedi- 

 tion, that into Sikkim, was a complete failure ; and on 

 this occasion the travellers apparently had good reason 

 to complain of the British Political 

 Officer at Darjeeling — not the one, 

 it may be observed, whose courtesy 

 Mr. D, Freshfield experienced on 

 his tour round Kinchinjanga. 



On the second year's journey they 

 plunged more deeply into the Hima- 

 layan ice world. After reaching 

 Askole by the Skoro La Pass, nearly 

 17,000 feet above sea-level, they 

 ascended the Biafo glacier, which 

 had shrunk and changed since 1892, 

 to the Hispar Pass, from which they 

 obtained splendid views of the neigh- 

 bouring snowy giants, afterwards 

 returning to Askole. Again leaving 

 it they pitched a camp above the 

 Skoro La Glacier, 16,200 feet from 

 sea-level, at which, or a higher one, 

 they remained for six days. From 

 it they ascended the Siegfriedhorn, 

 an excellent point of view 18,600 feet 

 high, and the snowy Mount Bullock 

 Workman, 19,450 feet. Returning 

 over the Skoro La Pass they struck 

 up the Shigar Valley, and finally, 

 from a camp 17,900 feet above 

 sea-level, reached, in unfavourable 

 weather, the summit of Koser Gunge, 

 about 21,000 feet. 



The book is pleasantly written, 

 though we cannot think such words 

 as " itemized" and " motived " valu- 

 able additions to the English 

 language. In addition to vivid de- 

 scriptions of the scenery, it records, 

 though professedly a work on moun- 

 tain travel, some facts of scientific 

 interest. The authors, like all recent 

 travellers m the higher Himalayas, 

 were struck with the signs of rapid 

 disintegration. The great changes 

 of temperature shatter the rocks, and 

 strew the mountain flanks with frag- 

 ments, forming huge slopes of debris 

 and great alluvial fans. On one 

 occasion they had a rather narrow 

 escape when "a mixture of solid and 

 semi-solid bodies," consisting of 

 " mud and stones of e'>'ery size, some 

 of them many tons in weight, which were rolled on one 

 another as if they were pebbles, poured down a glen, 

 sweeping everything before it "—a mass twenty to thirty 

 feet in height and some sixty yards in breadth. The work 

 of mountain sculpture evidently proceeds more rapidly in 

 the Himalayas than in the Alps. Yet there was probably 

 a time when the latter passed through a similar stage. 

 Mud glaciers, if the phrase be permitted, are not unknown 

 in them, but much material, often hastily classed as 

 moraine, is really of very composite origin, and is trans- 

 ported more by water than by ice. 



The last chapter of the book, which gives a summary 

 of their experiences of the effects of diminished atmo- 



NO. 1628, VOL. 63I 



spheric pressure, has a special value because Dr. Work- 

 man can speak as a medical expert. They lived for many 

 days at heights between fourteen and seventeen thousand 

 feet, sleeping several times in camps between sixteen and 

 eighteen thousand feet, and thrice reached elevations 

 between the last and twenty-one thousand feet. Their 

 experiences agree generally with those of Whymper, 

 Conway, FitzGerald and Vines. Below 15,000 feet Dr. 

 Workman noticed no great departure from the normal. 

 In the higher camps he slept well, though Mrs. 

 Workman did not ; they had good appetites, neither 



Fig. I.— Siniolehum, Sikkim. 



suffered from mountain sickness or, with one exception 

 in each case, from headache, and this they attributed to 

 cold rather than diminished atmospheric pressure ; but 

 both, like all their predecessors, felt the effects of the 

 latter increasingly perceptible after rising above some 

 16,000 feet. They made slower progress, got more 

 readily out of breath, and from about 18,000 feet upwards 

 found that all movements, even stooping or altering the 

 position when at rest, had to be made with deliberation 

 — even holding the breath for a moment to take a snap- 

 shot with the camera was followed by gasping. But by 

 accommodating themselves to the conditions they 

 climbed without severe discomfort, and did not find that 



