J ULV 2 1, I 9 I o] 



NATURE 



79 



plorers, " records " have still a market value amcng 

 geographers. 



Although previous achievements of mountain 

 climbers are now eclipsed by the Duke of the 

 Abruzzi's record of 24,853 feet in the Karakorum, the 

 exploration of the Nun Kun group by the authors 

 of this work is likely to remain for long of special 

 interest, on account of the circumstance that Mrs. 

 Workman broke even her own record for women by 

 scaling the Pinnacle Peak of 23,300 feet. The refer- 

 ence to this feat, however, is but a passing incident 

 in the narrative, less drawn-out, in fact, than the 

 accounts of the perky eccentricities of the irrepressible, 

 pugnacious little cock of the poultry-yard — the clown 

 of the party, who, like the indispensable figure among 

 the acrobatic performers of the circus show, " talks 

 all the time," as the Kashmiri khansainah remarked. 



Swadeshi are among those that exemplify new varie- 

 ties of well-known type difficulties that are invariably 

 "discovered" by non-official travellers in the Indian 

 region ; but, in the present instance, the few difficulties 

 faced and overcome are not of the kind which 

 travellers' descriptions often naively show to the 

 experienced Anglo-Indian to be due to the travellers' 

 own stupidity and ignorance of local affairs. 



The additions to topographical knowledge need not 

 be reviewed ; thev will be fully appreciated by officers 

 of the Indian Survey Department, who are more 

 conscious than their critics suppose of the short- 

 comings of their maps in regions which are of little 

 direct concern to their master, the tax-paver, who has 

 as much right to be considered as the sportsman and 

 traveller. The authors made the experiment of tak- 

 ing out six experienced Courmayeur porters under an 



:w .It sources of Hispor UlacUr .it 17,000 

 ground broken, horizontally stratified icC' 

 background southern Hispar boundary m 

 From "i'eaksand Glacieis of Nun Kun.' 



In foreground a\alancb( -nieve-b<d, pinnacles mostly fcinied i 

 s. Behind itiese !ce-»all covtred wiih yaiallel sub-id. nte.«. 

 ins. Kerroductd with the peimission of Dr. W. Huut.r Wurkn 



m avaUnche-blocls. In middle-] 

 ■.ridtes orunting with slope. In 

 1 and Mrs. t . tullock Workman. 



The book is not a mere narrative of travellers' 

 experiences in a little-trodden region ; it discusses 

 definite and valuable additions to geographical know- 

 ledge ; important topographical corrections are made 

 on the Survey Atlas quarter-sheet No. 45 S.W. ; 

 one-fifth of the text is devoted to the character and 

 origin of the different varieties of ice prominences on 

 the nevd-suriaces and glaciers, and on the glaciers 

 below the nevc-l\ne ; the principal part of a chapter 

 is devoted to a discussion of the immediate physio- 

 logical effects of high altitudes ; while the extremely 

 high temperatures in sunlight at high levels and the 

 great diurnal variations are all precisely recorded. 

 Incidents of hurhan interest on the journey are not 

 forgotten — the moral weaknesses of the Kargil coolie 

 and the price of the Wazir's devotion to the cause of 



NO. 2125, VOL. 84] 



expert guide, to replace the local coolies for work at 

 high altitudes, where muscle alone is of little service, 

 and this innovation has now been imitated by the 

 Duke of the .^bruzzi with successful results. The 

 disturbing uncertainty of the malingering coolie being 

 eliminated from the problem, Dr. Workman was 

 able, with his trustworthy porters, to make satisfac- 

 tory deductions from observations regarding the alti- 

 tude limitations of human activity; and he shows 

 that, in addition to the special danger of mountain 

 sickness as a precursor of frost-bite, insomnia and 

 the distressing moral and physical sequelae of imper- 

 fect oxygenation may be sufficient alone to fi.x the 

 stress-limit of the human organism at something 

 distinctly below the greatest Himalayan heights. 

 The curious nievcs penitent es first described by 



