The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-06-16

no, not that. One feels too indo-
lent to begin to do anything. I would
sit for a couple. OF minutes wondering
whether it wa worth while 20 take
the trouble to wind up my watch.
But as for turning back when one has
Started-One does not think Of that.
The impetus behind n is too great.
One has come all the way from Eng
land to do the thing, and so one must
90 on with it. The tendency would be
rather, I should think, to continue to
go on too far, and so get Denighted
on the mountain side, or pass the
point where action was possible"
Mr.. COnway's Thrilling Experience
ia the H~imaIayas.
Then Mr.. Conway traced The course
of his journey for me on the map,
telling me how he had crossed the
great Hispar and Biafo, and Baltoro
glaciers. and cut his way through the
labyrinth Of seracs, and reached the
top of Pioneer Peak, the highest point
on the globe on which human foot
has ever trod. But his talk was more
of the majesty of the scenery than of
the toll and hardship he had endured.
There IS nothing in Switzerland
that at all prepares o for 1t. Every
thing IN the HiInal2YaS IS on such an
immensely larger scale. The precipices
are higher, blacker, more sheer and
more appalling. The glaciers are in
finiteiy VaSter. Even the Great Aletsch
glacier, with its thirteen miles of ice,
is nothing compared with the HlSpar
and Biafo glaciers, which between
them took Us ten days to traverse,
and sometimes for twenty miles at a
stretch, have great bOulderS piled upon
their surface. The i~ce-falls, too, are
sleeper, longer and more difficult. In
Switzerland, as you know, to pass an
i~ce-fall, however %tOrtuOuS, is only an
incident in a long days climb. In the
KarakOrams it sometimes took US a
whole day to ascend a hundred yards,
and even then we might find u way
barred by some unpaSsable crevaSSe.
AS for the ice-fall at the head Of the
BaltorO glacier, it took us three days
to get from the bottom to the top
of it. and we had TO make " camps
in the middle of the crevasses-the n
at $4,000 and the other at 70, 1000 feet
above the sea"
But ii was by way of this Boltoro
glacier that Mr.. Conway made his big
ascent, and again I asked for details,
and he pointed to his fellow traveller
McCormick's picture, II told me all
about it.
Here" he began. SIS the head of the
i~ce-fall, where our last camp was
pitched, and here is the camp above
the seracs, where Mccormick sat to
make his sketch of the mountain"
He said it, not after the name of
a man who was conscious of having
passed through any exceptional ad-
ventures, but in the matter-of-fact
straightforward tones of a man who
might direct you how to find your
way from st. PauIs cathedral to the
Strand. But l had heard of these Sc
RAGS before. Mccormick, who had
had no graduated education in seracs,
had told me of them, and had filled in
the details far more luridly. He had
spoken of the perilouS position of the
tent, which stood upon a small plateau
of ice, with yawning precipices of ice
on every side of it,. He had spoken
of the horrible heat within, and of the
horrible cold without, n of the hor-
rible sense of sickness that oVercame
him, whenever he wasted tissue by
eXertion. He had even told me that
the creVasSeS were so near at hand,
and the sides of them so slippery,
that whenever a man had occasion to
go outside the tent for any purpose,
he had to be held tight by a rope Sc
curely fastened round his waist. But
Mr.. Conway went straight ahead with
his narrative, as though such details
of danger n discomfort were too
insignificant for a business-like noun
taineer to talk about. He continued,
pointing with the poker:
Eight Hours Mounting $4,000 Feet.
when we left the ice-fall, which
ran much further up the mountain
side than the i~ce-falls usually do in
Switzerland, the text step vas to get
on to the ridge. 1t was tolerably
steep, but not hard going, as, for the
most part, we only had to travel over
snow. Then, when we got upon the
ridge, we had to follow it. We could
not keep upon the crest, because it
was heavily corniced to our left, and
if we had travelled on the cornice it
would certainly. sooner or later, have
given way; so we had to keep along a
little below the ridge, with its crest
on our left. The ascent was not very
rapid, but it was just blue ice all the
way, covered only with the thinnest
possible crust Of frozen snow, crisp
and sparkling in the sunlight. The
sun beat upon our heads and roasted
us. Before it rose our feet were nearly
numbed and frost bitten. And, all
the way along that ridge, we had to
cut with ice-aXe every step we took.
Fortunately we, had climbing irons,
strapped to our boots like skates, and
this enabled US TO cut the steps
smaller thai would have been neces-
Sary if we had been without them.
Even as it was, however, we could
not cut, on ar average, more than
two steps a minute, and sc it took
US about eight hours to climb some
thing less than 5000 feet. We did
it, however, and reached the top at a
quarter to 5 in the afternoon. And
then we rested, and 1 examined the
guide Zurbriggen's pulse with the
sphygmograph."
An Accident Coming Down.
I had already seen these sphygnlo-
graphic tracings. A man of science
was looking at them with me,
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