The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1907-09-12

more simple than to locate it, al
least. with regard to the general
mass. Yet on the contrary, when
DR.. Gottfried Merzbacher set out in
the spring Of 1902 to continue In
that region the explorations begun
by the great Russian, Semenoff, he
spent two full years in the immediate
vicinity Of the peak, often crossing
ranges within twenty miles of it,
photographing 1t with a telephoto
lens at distance of five miles, and
scaling glacier after glacier which
seemed to lead directly to it before
he discovered that it does not, after
all. stand in the centre of the chain,
but on minor ridge at one side, and
that all the glaciers flow from a COM
mon field Of snow and ice at the foot
OF remarkable ridge known as the
Marble Wall.
= It was in June, 1902, that Doctor
Merzbacher, after years of prepara-
ton in Notwithstanding in other
parts of the world, set out with four
other Europeans, all experts in the
work they were now to carry on, to
decide the actual location and i'm
portance of Khan-Tengri. The 9TH
ers were a geologist, an expert al
pinist engineer, mountain guide,
and a preserver of specimens.
They entered Asia by the Trans
Caspian railway to Tashkent, and
thence went by rough journey over
the Central Asian steppes, by taran-
tass. to the shore of Issyk Kul. There
their real struggles began. There
lay before them, in the almost i'm
penetrable Businesses of the noun
ta1ns, complete cart-wheel of gla-
ciers, near the hub of which was the
peak they sought.
Setting out round the tire" with
heavy burdens of Photographic
plates, tools, and supplies of all
sorts, borne by the explorers and
their native porters, they entered up
on river after river of ice, and with
endless toll made their ways up each
broken, rock-strewed surface.
Sometimes SO ragged were these
ice-paths that not more than two or
three miles could be covered in a
day. On one afternoon, while they
We're making camp, terrific earth
quake shock brought down rocky
walls and shattered ice masses, so
that they doubted their ability to get
out by the way they had entered the
mountains.
Glacier after glacier led them up
ward, at elevations of fifteen to eigh-
teen thousand feet, only to confront
them at last with some rock wall
which could not be scaled Yet every
now and then the tantalizing peak
appeared to the right or left OF. dead
ahead Of them. Meanwhile, as their
stores were used, they filled the packs
with fossils and other specimens.
Their Photographic plates became in
valuable records of mountain-top
Line by line their maps
were corrected and revised as they
traced out the mountain streams.
By the first winter they had trav-
eled once round the Wheel" and
reached the road to Kashgar. In
that old Central Asian market-town
they spent the winter, going on fire.
quent expeditions up the southern,
snOw-free ranges Of the Tian-Shan.
The next spring saw them, tireless
in their endeavors, again attempting
some Of the same glaciers which had
turned them back the year previous.
and at last, toward the end of that
season, two of them, abandoning
their porters at an elevation of about
fifteen thousand feet, and pushing
on alone up the Inilchek glacier,
suddenly found themselves, at an ele-
vation of nearly twenty thousand
feet, directly at the foot of the long
sought Khan-Tengri, which rose four
thousand feet higher, unscalable
above the icy river.-Youth's Com
panion.