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"Up there in the northwest provinces they told me I was crazy when I outlined, one night in a mess, of which I was a guest at the time, my scheme for heading northeast toward a tributary of the Ganges which would bring me to the neighbourhood of Khatmandu, right under the shadow of Everest.
For I say quite deliberately and mean quite literally that the geography of Mount Everest and its vicinity will not be complete until it has been painted by some great painter and described by some great poet. Making the most accurate map of it will not be completing our knowledge of it.
The Arun River, for example, rises in Tibet and cuts through the Himalaya by a deep gorge in the region between Mount Everest and Kinchinjunga. These rivers are, indeed, much older than the mountains. They were running their course before the Himalaya were upheaved, and they kept wearing out a channel for themselves as the mountains rose and slowly over-towered them.
The following day saw the arrival of the Cotopaxi at Liverpool, and as, of course, it had been known for several days beforehand that certain survivors from the Everest were on board her, and as, thanks to frequent wireless communications with her, the time of her arrival was known almost to a minute, and had been made public, the landing stage was packed with people when the ship drew alongside, most of them, it is true, animated by nothing more than mere morbid curiosity to gaze upon those who had recently passed through a very terrible experience, but among them were a few who had come down to welcome back to life the relatives or friends who had escaped.
Friends came in the gray dawn with horses, and my party rode away to a distant point where Kinchinjunga and Mount Everest show up best, but I stayed at home for a private view; for it was very old, and I was not acquainted with the horses, any way.
He communicated his decision to Earle immediately that the question was raised, and was surprised, and not a little pleased, when the American announced his intention to also return to England. "You see," the latter explained, "my only, or at least my principal, reason for going to New York fizzled out when the Everest took my collection of hunting trophies with her to the bottom of the Atlantic.
For while you were kept busy, way back there in Liverpool, over the inquiry into the loss of the Everest, I saw a good deal of your sister, with, I believe, the full approval of your friends, McGregor and his wife. I was attracted to Grace from the very first, and the more I saw of her, the greater grew my admiration of her.
"Now," said the professor as they rose from the breakfast-table, "in seeking to plant our feet upon the topmost peak of Mount Everest we are about to enter upon a task of no ordinary difficulty and danger, and it is desirable that no avoidable risks should be run. The danger arises from two causes the excessive cold, and the highly rarefied state of the atmosphere at so enormous an elevation.
The great mountain mass, presumed to occasion the periodical blunting of the southern horn, was precariously estimated by the Lilienthal observer to rise to the prodigious height of nearly twenty-seven miles, or just five times the elevation of Mount Everest! Yet the phenomenon persists, whatever may be thought of the explanation.
There wasn't much to do in the hotel beyond reading back numbers of The Lady's Pictorial, and I went to bed on Saturday night rather low in my mind, fearing, after all, I was not to be accounted worthy to behold the mountains. Some of the people in the hotel were getting up at 3.30 to go to Tiger Hill to see the sun rise on Everest.
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