73 
MOUNTAINEERING. 
(Illustrated by the Lantern.) 
By Mr. W. CECIL SLINGSBY. 
November 26th, 1907. 
The lecturer entertained a large audience for over an hour 
and a half with panoramic mountain views in Norway, Switzer- 
land, and Great Britain, and with interesting reminiscences 
of his experiences as a mountaineer. No county, he believed, 
had turned out so many first rate mountaineers as the county 
Palatine of Lancashire. The Alpine Club had had 17 presidents, 
the ordinary term being three years, and two of those presidents 
had been Lancashire men. Only a few weeks since he had 
great pleasure in proposing at a meeting of the Alpine 
Club the name of Mr. Woolley, of Manchester, as in every 
way a most suitable man for the next president. It was in 
1857 that the Alpine Club was founded, and this year was 
therefore the jubilee of the club. It had been intended to 
celebrate the occasion by something very big, nothing less 
than to explore the back of Mount Everest. The scheme had 
the support of Lord Curzon, Lord Kitchener, and the Indian 
Government. A strong party was got up, to be commanded 
by Major Bruce, who had been a good deal in the Himalayas. 
For political reasons, however, it was considered advisable 
that no English party should go into Thibet this year. That 
was a great disappointment to the Alpine Club, because they 
would have been exceptionally well led. Nobody expected 
that Everest would be conquered on the first visit, but all 
believed that a good deal would be discovered. It had been 
well known that on the north side of the Himalayas the snow 
line was 3,000 feet higher than on the south side, on account 
of the differences in the rainfall, so that there was reasonable 
hope that a great height would have been attained on that 
mountain. 
