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We made good use of the time. The first thing to be done was to put our meteorological station in order. On April 1 all the instruments were in use. In the kitchen were hung our two mercury barometers, four aneroids, barograph, thermograph, and one thermometer. They were placed in a well-protected corner, farthest from the stove.
With these two new aneroids, made with a wide margin of safety, we felt satisfied that, once at the summit, we should know whether there was a chance that Bandelier was right and this was indeed the top of America. For exact measurements we depended on Topographer Hendriksen, who was due to triangulate Coropuna in the course of his survey along the 73d meridian.
To begin with, Bowers broke the only hypsometer thermometer, and so they were left with nothing to check their two aneroids. Then during the first part of the march they got among sastrugi which jerked the sledges about, and so tired out the second team that they had great difficulty in keeping up. And, finally, they found more crevasses and disturbances during the afternoon.
Six months previously I had written to J. Hicks, the celebrated instrument maker of London, asking him to construct, with special care, two large "Watkins" aneroids capable of recording altitudes five thousand feet higher than Coropuna was supposed to be. His reply had never reached me, nor did any one in Arequipa know anything about the barometers. Apparently my letter had miscarried.
On the 14th we made a good 9 miles, but only by dint of our utmost efforts we worked on ski, and I tremble to think what we should have done here without them. The aneroids gave us a rise of about 500 feet a day.
They included the Mummery tent with pegs and poles, the mountain-mercurial barometer, the two Watkins aneroids, the hypsometer, a pair of Zeiss glasses, two 3A kodaks, six films, a sling psychrometer, a prismatic compass and clinometer, a Stanley pocket level, an eighty-foot red-strand mountain rope, three ice axes, a seven-foot flagpole, an American flag and a Yale flag.
So they were just aneroids: aluminum cases, jewelled movements, army-officer patented improvements, Kew certificates, import duty, and all just aneroids, and one was as bad as the other. Within their limitations they are exceedingly useful instruments, but it is folly to depend on them for measuring great heights.
At 1 P.M. we woke up, drenched to the skin, for the sun, which had come out after the storm had abated, had thawed the thick coating of snow over us. The elevation of this camp, according to my aneroids, was 18,000 feet. The wind, from the south-east, cut like a knife, and we suffered from it, not only on this occasion, but every day during the whole time we were in Tibet.
Bowers broke the only hypsometer thermometer. We have nothing to check our two aneroids. Night camp 49. Bar. 20.82. T. -6.3°. We marched off well after lunch on a soft, snowy surface, then came to slippery hard sastrugi and kept a good pace; but I felt this meant something wrong, and on topping a short rise we were once more in the midst of crevasses and disturbances.
This was, however, exceptional, and it would not do for any one to rely on aneroids alone for the exact measurement of mountain heights. There were in my outfit three artificial horizons one with mercury, the others constructed with a plate glass. The latter had a special arrangement by which they could be levelled to a nicety.
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