40 



NA JURE 



[May 



lo, 1900 



he felt quite well. He answered that he felt perfectly well, 

 but that he was so cold he had no sensation whatever left in 

 his feet ; for a few moments he tried dancing about, and kick- 

 ing his feet against the rocks, to get back his circulation. I 

 began to get alarmed, for frozen feet are one of the greatest 

 dangers one has to contend against in Alpine climbing. The 

 porters who had been lagging behind now came up to us ; I at 

 once told Zurbriggen to take his boots oft, and we all set to 

 work to rub his feet. To my horror I discovered that the cir- 

 culation had practically stopped. We continued working hard 

 upon him, but he said that he felt nothing. We took off" his 

 stockings, and tried rubbing first with snow and then with 

 brandy ; we were getting more and more alarmed, and were 

 even beginning to fear that the case might be hopeless, and 

 might even necessitate amputation. At last we observed that 

 his face was becoming pallid, and slowly and gradually he began 

 to feel a little pain. We hailed this sign with joy, for it meant, 

 of course, that vitality was returning to the injured parts, and 

 we renewed our efforts ; the pain now came on more and more 

 severely ; he writhed and shrieked and begged us to stop, as he 

 was well-nigh maddened with suffering. Knowing, however, 

 that this treatment was the one hope for him, we continued to 

 rub, in spite of his cries, literally holding him down, for the 

 pain was getting so great that he could no longer control him- 

 self, and tried to fight us off". The sun now rose over the brow 

 of the mountain, and the air became slightly warm ; I gave him 

 a strong dose of brandy, and after a great deal of trouble induced 

 him to stand up. We slipped on his boots without lacing them, 

 and supporting him between two of us, we began slowly to get 

 him down the mountain side. At intervals we stopped to repeat 

 the rubbing operation, he expostulating with us vainly the while. 

 After about an hour and a half, we succeeded in getting him 

 back to our tent, where he threw himself down, and begged to 

 be allowed to go to sleep. We would not permit this, however, 

 and taking off" his boots again we continued the rubbing opera- 

 tions, during which he shouted in agony, cursing us volubly in 

 some seven diff"erent languages. We then prepared some very 

 hot soup, and made him drink it, wrapping him up warmdy in 

 all the blankets we could find and letting him sleep in the sun. 

 In the afternoon he seemed quite right again, and was able to 

 walk about a little " (pp. 61-2). 



This episode brought that day's attempt to an end, but the 

 next morning (January i) they started again at 8 a.m., with 

 temperature at 26° F. , passed the place where they had turned 

 back on December 31, and then encountered great and steep 

 slopes of loose, rolling stones ; which, so far as the mountain 

 itself was concerned, seem to have formed the greatest difficulty 

 on the ascent. " The first few steps we took caused us to 

 pause and look at one another with dismay. Every step we 

 made, we slipped back, sometimes the whole way, sometimes 

 more. . . . We continued plodding on for some time, our 

 breath getting shorter and shorter as we struggled and fought 

 with the rolling stones in our desperate attempts not to lose the 

 steps we gained. . . . There was nothing to fix our attention 

 upon except the terrible, loose, round stones, that kept rolling, 

 rolling as if to engulf us." Now another one became ill. 

 " Louis Pollinger" (who is an unusually sturdy and powerful 

 young fellow) "was turning a sickly, greenish hue. All the 

 colour had left his lips, and he began to complain of sickness and 

 dizziness." They went on until 2.15 p.m., and then turned 

 back. "Zurbriggen, I think, could have gone a little farther, 

 but even he admitted that he did not think he would be 

 capable of reaching the summit. . . . The temperature had 

 now dropped to 17° F., and the sun gave us no warmth to 

 speak of. Coming down was almost worse than going up. 

 Fatigued as we were, and chilled and numb to the bone, we 

 constantly fell down, and it was four o'clock before we reached 

 our encampment. . , . We were all of us suffering from splitting 

 headaches." 



Although Mr. Fitz Gerald speaks frequently of heat and cold, 

 he does not often quote actual temperatures ; but at this point 

 he remarks that the temperature fell to 5° F. during the night, 

 that the maximum in the sun had only been 47° F. during the 

 previous three days, and that it had barely reached 29° F. in 

 the shade. Though the cold which was experienced was not 

 at all lower than might have been expected, they found it 

 trying. " The cold at this altitude seems absolutely unendur- 

 able after sunset. I have seen the men actually sit down and 

 cry like children, so discouraged were they by this intense | 



NO. T593, VOL. 62] 



cold" (p. 57); and he .«ays, truly, at another place, that 

 " with the barometer standing at fifteen inches, the rarefied 

 atmosphere lowers all the vital organs to such an extent that 

 20° of frost feels more like 60°" below freezing-point (p. 63). 

 There were four of them in their miserable little tent, packed 

 so close that each time one turned over he was obliged to 

 wake the rest." "A terrible and stunning depression had 

 taken hold upon us all, and none of us cared even to speak. At 

 times I felt almost as if I should go out of my mind. . . . All 

 ambition to accomplish anything had left us, and our one 

 desire was to get down to our lower camp, and breathe once 

 more like human beings " (p. 67) ; and so down they went, 

 this time to Puente del Inca, 8948 feet, at the mouth of the 

 Horcones Valley, and waited there a week. 



On January 9 they started again, passed that night half-way 

 up the Horcones Valley, and on the next day went up to the 

 18,700 feet camp, ascending from 14,000 feet at the rate of 854 

 feet per hour ! " We all seemed so well that I thought it 

 better not to make an attempt on the mountain next day, but to 

 see what a few days of rest and good food would do for us. My 

 hope was that the system would accustom itself to the rarefied 

 air." The minimum of that night was i°F., which is the lowest 

 temperature recorded in the volume. At 9 a.m. on January 

 12, Mr. Fitz Gerald set out once more for the summit, accom- 

 panied by Zurbriggen and Joseph Pollinger. " For my own 

 part I knew, after the first quarter of an hour, that the attempt 

 would be fruitless. However, I pushed along, hoping against 

 hope that by some chance I might feel better as we went on. I 

 had barely reached 20,000 feet, when I was obliged to throw 

 myself on the ground, overcome by acute pains and nausea," 

 and he returned to the tent, while Zurbriggen pushed on alone. 

 He did not, however, reach the summit ; and, when he was re- 

 turning, was watched through a field-glass. 



" He was apparently quite exhausted ; he could only take a 

 few steps at a time, and then seemed to stumble forward help- 

 lessly. We watched him thus slowly descend for about an hour 

 and a half ; first he sat down for four or five minutes, then he 

 slowly plodded onward again. At last he reached a large patch 

 of snow, where, by sliding, he was able to make better time. 

 He did not reach the tent till after sunset, and then he was 

 speechless with thirst and fatigue" (p. 78). 



On January 13, another attempt gave a similar result ; but at 

 night preparations were made for a renewed assault on the 

 morrow ; and on the 14th, Zurbriggen, Joseph Pollinger, Lanti 

 and Mr. Fitz Gerald started at 7 a.m., "all in excellent spirits 

 — so far as it is possible to be cheerful at 19,000 feet." 

 Things went well until 12 30, when they had reached an eleva- 

 tion which was estimated to be about 22,000 feet, and then Mr. 

 Fitz Gerald collapsed. It is to the credit of the head of the 

 Expedition that he writes so frankly, and one cannot but regret 

 that his perseverance did not meet with success. This is his 

 own description : 



" I got up, and tried once more to go on, but I was only able 

 to advance from two to three steps at a time, and then I had to 

 stop, panting for breath, my struggles alternating with violent 

 fits of nausea. At times I would fall down, and each time had 

 greater difficulty in rising ; black specks swam across my sight ; 

 I was like one walking in a dream, so dizzy and sick that the 

 whole mountain seemed whirling round with me. The time 

 went on ; it was growing late, and I had now got into sych a 

 helpless condition that I was no longer able to raise myself, but 

 had to call on Lanti to help me. . . . Lanti was in good con- 

 dition, and could, I feel sure, have reached the summit. He 

 was one of the strongest men we had with us. For a long time 

 past he had been begging me to turn back, assuring me that our 

 progress was so slow, that even should I keep it up I could not 

 reach the top before sunset. I was right under the great wall of 

 the peak, and not more than a few hundred yards from the great 

 couloir that leads up between the two summits. I do not know 

 the exact height of this spot, but I judge it to be about a 

 thousand feet below the top. Here I gave up the fight and 

 started to go down. 



" I shall never forget the descent that followed. I was so weak 

 that my legs seemed to fold up under me at every step, and I 

 kept falling forward and cutting myself on the shattered stones 

 that covered the sides of the mountain. I do not know how 

 long I crawled in this miserable plight, steering for a big patch 

 of snow that lay in a sheltered spot, but I should imagine that 



