. Mount Everest, the reconnaissance, 1921. s, aU that ever have been seen, Makalu is incom-parable for its spectacular and rugged grandeur. It wassignificant to us that the astonishing precipices rising aboveus on the far side of the glacier as we looked across fromour camp, a terrific awe-inspiring sweep of snow-boundrocks, were the sides not so much of an individual moimtain,but rather of a gigantic bastion or outwork defending the broad head of the Kama Valley the two summitsof Everest are enclosed between the North-east arete andthe South-east arete bending round from the South P
. Mount Everest, the reconnaissance, 1921. s, aU that ever have been seen, Makalu is incom-parable for its spectacular and rugged grandeur. It wassignificant to us that the astonishing precipices rising aboveus on the far side of the glacier as we looked across fromour camp, a terrific awe-inspiring sweep of snow-boundrocks, were the sides not so much of an individual moimtain,but rather of a gigantic bastion or outwork defending the broad head of the Kama Valley the two summitsof Everest are enclosed between the North-east arete andthe South-east arete bending round from the South Peak;below them is a basin of tumbled ice weU marked by anumber of moraines and receiving a series of tributariespouring down between the buttresses which support themountain faces in this immense cirque. Perhaps theastonishing charm and beauty here he in the comphcationshalf hidden behind a mask of apparent simpHcity, so thatones eye never tires of following up the fines of the greataretes, of following down the arms pushed out from their. THE EASTERN APPROACH 227 great shoulders, and of following along the broken edgeof the hanging glacier covering the upper half of this Easternface of Everest so as to determine at one point after anotherits relation with the buttresses below and with their abut-ments against the rocks which it covers. But for me themost magnificent and subUme in mountain scenery canbe made loveHer by some more tender touch ; and that, too,is added here. When aU is said about Chomolungma, theGoddess Mother of the World, and about Chomo Uri, theGoddess of the Turquoise Mountain, I come back to thevalley, the valley bed itself, the broad pastures, where ourtents lay, where cattle grazed and where butter was made,the httle stream we followed up to the valley head, wanderingalong its weU-turfed banks under the high moraine, thefew rare plants, saxifrages, gentians and primulas, so wellwatered there, and a soft, familiar blueness in the air whicheven here may charm
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1922
