Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, 1921. George Mallory
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creepers embracing their stems, or hanging down from their branches. The handsome pothos—the finest of the creepers—grew everywhere. The curious pandanus or screw pine displayed its long and picturesque fronds, while here and there among the dark green of the tropical forest showed up as a brilliant patch of colour the scarlet blooms of the clerodendrons. Above the forests the hillsides had been terraced with immense labour into rice fields, which at this time of year were not yet planted out, but the fields of maize were already ripening. At Kalimpong there was a large and comfortable Dak bungalow, surrounded by a well-kept garden full of roses and scarlet hibiscus with a beautiful and large-flowered mauve solanum growing up the pillars on the verandah. At Kalimpong we were entertained by Dr. Graham and his charming daughters, who showed us true hospitality and kindness. They live in a very pretty house embowered in roses on the crest of the hill and commanding lovely views over the Teesta Valley and up to the snowy peaks of Kanchenjunga. Higher up on the spur are the homes and the industrial schools that many years of hard work have brought into being, thanks to the indefatigable labours of Dr. Graham and the late Mrs. Graham; these now hold between 600 and 700 pupils, both boys and girls, who, when they leave these schools, have all been taught some useful trade and are sent out as useful members of society. They are given as practical an education as could be wished for anywhere. At the Grahams' house I met David Macdonald, the British Trade Agent at Yatung, who was acting temporarily as political agent in Sikkim until Major Bailey arrived from England. He was an old friend of mine, as I had met him before in Tibet. He promised us every assistance in his power and had telegraphed to Yatung and to the Jongpen at Phari to have supplies and anything we wanted in readiness at those places. He told me that an old Tibetan Lama, who knew Mount Everest well, had described it as “Miti guti cha-phu long-nga,” “the mountain visible from all directions, and where a bird becomes blind if it flies so high.” Throughout our journey across Sikkim the weather was very bad, with heavy falls of rain every day and night. We had had the bad luck to strike the Chota Bursat, or little monsoon, which usually heralds the coming of the proper monsoon a fortnight or three weeks later.
The march to Pedong was an easy one of 14 miles with a gentle climb of 3,000 feet followed by a descent of 2,000 feet past gardens beautiful with their great trees of scarlet hibiscus, daturas and bougainvilleas, which grew with wonderful luxuriance in this climate where frost is almost unknown in winter and where in summer the temperature scarcely ever exceeds 85° Fahrenheit. We passed some of the most wonderful datura hedges that I have ever seen with trees 15 feet to 20 feet in height and laden with hundreds of enormous white trumpet-shaped blooms 8 inches in diameter and fully a foot long. I could only stand and admire. At night these great white flowers glowed as though with phosphorescence in the dark and had a strangely sweet smell. I got thoroughly soaked on the march, for a couple of minutes of these deluges are sufficient to go through any waterproof.
Our mules were now beginning to give us great trouble. Several had to be left behind after each march and fresh animals had to be hired locally to replace those left behind. At Pedong there were more wonderful daturas, and all along the next march we kept passing grand bushes of these flowers. It rained all that night and most of the following day, so that we had a very wet and trying march to Rongli—the distance was only 12 miles, but this included a very steep descent of over 3,000 feet to the bottom of a steamy valley, followed by a climb of 3,000 feet across an intervening ridge and then down another 2,000 feet to the Rongli bungalow. The poor mules were very tired by the end of the march and one had died of colic on the way. Most of the others too were getting very sore backs from the constant rain. On the way Wollaston and I stopped at Rhenock to have a look at the Chandra Nursery kept by Tulsi Dass, where there were many interesting plants, chiefly collected in the Sikkim forests. There was a tree growing everywhere in the forests with a white flower which Sikkim people called Chilauni, and all along the paths the Sikkim durbar had been busy planting mulberry, walnut and toon trees. There was a curious pink ground plant that grew in the forests which I was told belonged to the Amomum species. There were also beautiful orchids in the trees, mauve, white and yellow, belonging to the Dendrobium, Coelogene and Cymbidium families—some with fine sprays of flowers 18 inches long. Here at Rongli the mules were so tired that we had to give them a day's rest before they could go on any further. It was a hot and feverish spot to stop in, and only necessity compelled us to do so, as we were unable to get any extra transport the following morning to supplement the mules that were sick.
All that day we had passed numbers of mules coming down from Tibet laden with bales of wool, and others were returning to Tibet with sheets of copper, manufactured goods, grain and rice which had been bought in exchange. The dark faces of the muleteers with their turquoise earrings formed a pretty picture and they were full of friendly smiles and greetings for us. The mules travelled on their own—if any mule stopped on the path, a stone always aimed with the greatest accuracy reminded him that it was time to go on. Owing to our having to halt a day at Rongli, we had to stop the second party, and were able to do this at Ari, a bungalow 3 miles short of Rongli. I rode up to see how they were getting on, and found they were having the same trouble with their mules that we had been having. On May 23 we left for Sedongchen, or Padamchen as the Tibetans called it. Sedongchen is the old local name, so-called because there once grew there a very large “Sedong” tree. This is a tree that has a white sap which irritates the skin intensely and sets up a rash. Sedongchen was only 9 miles from Rongli, but there was a very steep climb, from 2,700 feet up to 7,000 feet, and our mules only just managed to arrive there. The first part of the way is alongside the rushing stream of the Rongli, through lovely woods and dense tropical vegetation. Caladiums, kolocasias and begonias were growing on every rock, and the giant pothos with its large shining leaves grew up the stems of many of the trees. Climbers of all kinds, such as vines and peppers, hung down from the branches. Here, too, were magnificent forest trees, fully 150 feet high, with clean straight trunks and without a branch for a hundred feet; others nearly equally tall, which the Sikkim people call “Panisage,” had huge buttresses and trunks nearly 40 feet in circumference. Every branch here was covered by thick matted growth of orchids. For the first time since leaving Darjeeling the sun shone, and after we left the forests we found the uphill climb very hot. On to-day's march, out of the fifty mules with which we started there were only fourteen carrying our own kit, and of those fourteen we found on arrival at Sedongchen that none would be fit to proceed on the following day. It was therefore with great reluctance that I felt compelled to send back the Government mules, as they could not only not carry their own line gear, but had become an extra and very large source of expense and worry to us. That the mules should have completely broken down like this after a five days' march showed that they must have been in no kind of training and condition and were completely unfitted for heavy work in the mountains. The hill ponies and mules that we had hired to supplement them, although they had been given the heaviest loads, always arrived first, and made nothing of each march. By this failure of the Government transport we were now thrown back on our own resources, and obliged to depend everywhere on what local transport we could obtain, and this often took some time to collect.
At Sedongchen there was a pleasant bungalow, rather Swiss in appearance, with fine views down the Rongli Valley and across all the forest ridges over which we had come, right back to Darjeeling. Opposite us, to the South-east, were densely wooded hills with clouds and mists drifting along the tops, while here and there a waterfall showed up white amidst the dark green vegetation.
Rain came down steadily all night, but the morning proved somewhat finer. Being on the main trade route, we were luckily able to get other transport to replace the Government mules and to arrange for hired mules as far as Yatung. The local animal is a wonderful beast, extremely sure footed, and not minding in the least a climb of 6,000 feet. The path from Sedongchen is really only a stone causeway, very slippery and unpleasant either to walk or ride upon, but probably anything else would be worn away by the torrential rains that fall here. At one place we had to make a wide detour, as the rain of the night before had washed away some hundred yards of the pathway, but luckily this was not in a very steep part, as otherwise we might have been delayed for several days. The constant rain had already brought out the leeches, and on most of the stones or blades of grass beside the path they sat waiting for their meal of blood and clung on to any mule or human being that passed by. The mules suffered severely, and drops of blood on the stones became frequent from the bleeding wounds.
The climb