TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E, 625 
fifty years ago affixed to Mount Everest. The ground for this action on the 
part of the Survey was the lack of any native name. Some years ago I ventured 
to suggest that the 29,002-feet peak (No. XV. of the Survey) was probably visible 
from the neighbourhood of Katmandu, even though the identifications of it by 
Schlagintweit and others might be incorrect, and that since some at least of the 
summits of the snowy group east of that city are apparently known in Nepal as 
Gaurisankar, that name might, following the practice which gave its name to 
Monte Rosa in the Alps, legitimately be applied to the loftiest crest of the moun- 
tain group of which the Nepalese Gaurisankar formed a part. 
Recently, by the kindness of Lord Curzon, acting on a suggestion of my own, 
Captain Wood, a Survey officer, has been deputed to visit Katmandu and ascertain 
the facts. He has found that, contrary to the opinion of the late General Walker 
and the assertion of Major Waddell, Peak XV. is visible from the hills round the 
capital, and that the two highest snowpeaks visible from the city itself in the same 
direction were known to the Nepalese ‘ nobles’ as Gaurisankar, 
These latter peaks or peak are about 36 miles distant from Peak XV., but are 
connected with it by a continuous line of glaciers. According to the principles 
that have prevailed in the division of the Alps, they would undoubtedly be con- 
sidered as part of the same group, and the name which, according to Captain 
Wood, is applied to a portion of the group might legitimately be adopted for its 
loftiest peak. 
But the chiefs of the Indian Survey take, as they are entitled to, a different 
view. They have decided to confine the name Gaurisankar to one of the peaks 
seen from Katmandu itself. Ido not desire to raise any further protest against this 
decision. For since, in 1886, I first raised the question its interest has become mainly 
academical. A local Tibetan name for Peak XV., Chomo-Kankar, the Lord of 
Snows, has been provided on excellent native authority, confirmed by that com- 
petent Tibetan scholar, Major Waddell, and I trust this name may in the future be 
used for the highest mountain in the world.! The point at issue is mainly one of 
taste. Indian surveyors may see no incongruity in naming after one of their own 
late chiefs the highest mountain in the world. But in this view they are, I believe, 
in a small minority. 
I would urge mountain explorers to attempt in more distant lands what the late 
Messrs. Adams-Reilly and Nichols, Mr. Tuckett, and Lieut. Payer (of Arctic 
fame) did forty years ago with so much success in the Alps, what the Swiss 
Alpine Club have done lately, take a district, and working from the trigonometri- 
cally fixed points of a survey, where one exists, fill itin by planetabling with the 
help of the instruments for photographic and telephotographic surveying, in the 
use of which Mr. Reeves, the map curator to the R.G.S., is happy to give 
instruction. An excellent piece of work of this kind has been done by Mr. Stein 
in Central Asia. 
There are, I know, some old-fashioned persons in this country who dispute the 
use of photography in mountain work. It can only be because they have never 
given it a full and fair trial with proper instruments. 
Lastly, I come to a matter on which we may hope before long to have the 
advantage of medical opinion, based for the first time on a large number of cases. 
I refer to the effects of high altitudes on the human frame and the extent of the 
normal diminution in force as men ascend. The advance to Lhasa ought to do 
much to throw light on this interesting subject. I trust the Indian Government 
has taken care that the subject shall be carefully investigated by experts. The 
experience of most mountaineers (including my own) in the last few years has 
tended to modify our previous belief that bodily weakness increases more or 
less regularly with increasing altitude. Mr. White, the Resident in Sikhim, and 
my party both found on the borders of Tibet that the feelings of fatigue and dis- 
' See, for discussions of this question, Proccedings of the Royal Geographical 
Society, N.S., 1885, 7, 753; 1886, 8, 88, 176, 257; Geographical Journal, 1903, 21, 
294; 1904, 23, 89; Alpine Journal, 1886, 12, 448 ; 1902-3, 21, 53,317; Petormann’s 
Mitteilungen, 1888, 34, 338 ; 1890, 86, 251; 1901, 47, 40; 1902, 48, 14. 
1904, 3s 
