In the Sahibs' tent that night there took place a long and fragmentary conversation with the headman, our Sirdar acting as interpreter. We gained one piece of information: there were two Chomolungmas. It was not difficult to guess that, if Everest were one, the other must be Makalu. We asked to be guided to the furthest Chomolungma.
The morning of August 4 was not more favourable to our reconnaissance. We went down steeply to the valley bed, crossed a stream and a rickety bridge, and wound on through lovely meadows and much dwarf rhododendron till we came to the end of a glacier and mounted by its left bank. Towards mid-day the weather showed signs of clearing; suddenly on our left across the glacier we saw gigantic precipices looming through the clouds. We guessed they must belong in some way to Makalu. We were told that this was the first Chomolungma, while the valley we were now following would lead us to the other. It was easy to conclude that one valley, this one, must come up on the North side of Makalu all the way to Everest. But we saw no more. In a few moments the grey clouds blowing swiftly up from below had enveloped us, rain began to fall heavily, and when eventually we came to broad meadows above the glaciers, where yaks were grazing and Tibetan tents were pitched, we were content to stop. At least we should have the advantage here of good butter and cream from this dairy farm. There was indeed no point in going farther; we had no desire to run our heads against the East face of Everest; we must now wait for a view.
The weather signs were decidedly more hopeful as I looked out of our tent next morning, and we decided at once to spend the day in some sort of reconnaissance up the valley. Presently away at the head of it we saw the clouds breaking about the mountain-sides. Everest itself began to clear; the great North-east arête came out, cutting the sky to the right; and little by little the whole Eastern face was revealed to us.
As I recall now our first impression of the amazing scenery around us, I seem chiefly to remember the fresh surprise and vivid delight which, for all we had seen before, seemed a new sensation. Even the map of the Kama Valley, now that we have it, may stir the imagination. Besides Everest itself the crest of the South Peak, 28,000 feet high, and its prodigious South-east shoulder overlook the Western end; while Makalu, 12 miles from Everest, thrusts out Northwards a great arm and another peak to choke the exit; so that whereas the frontier ridge from Everest to Makalu goes in a South-easterly direction, the Kangshung Glacier in the main valley runs nearly due East. In this spacious manner three of the five highest summits in the world overlook the Kama Valley.
And we now saw a scene of magnificence and splendour even more remarkable than the facts suggest. Among all the mountains I have seen, and, if we may judge by photographs, all that ever have been seen, Makalu is incomparable for its spectacular and rugged grandeur. It was significant to us that the astonishing precipices rising above us on the far side of the glacier as we looked across from our camp, a terrific awe-inspiring sweep of snow-bound rocks, were the sides not so much of an individual mountain, but rather of a gigantic bastion or outwork defending Makalu. At the broad head of the Kama Valley the two summits of Everest are enclosed between the North-east arête and the South-east arête bending round from the South Peak; below them is a basin of tumbled ice well marked by a number of moraines and receiving a series of tributaries pouring down between the buttresses which support the mountain faces in this immense cirque. Perhaps the astonishing charm and beauty here lie in the complications half hidden behind a mask of apparent simplicity, so that one's eye never tires of following up the lines of the great arêtes, of following down the arms pushed out from their great shoulders, and of following along the broken edge of the hanging glacier covering the upper half of this Eastern face of Everest so as to determine at one point after another its relation with the buttresses below and with their abutments against the rocks which it covers. But for me the most magnificent and sublime in mountain scenery can be made lovelier by some more tender touch; and that, too, is added here. When all is said about Chomolungma, the Goddess Mother of the World, and about Chomo Uri, the Goddess of the Turquoise Mountain, I come back to the valley, the valley bed itself, the broad pastures, where our tents lay, where cattle grazed and where butter was made, the little stream we followed up to the valley head, wandering along its well-turfed banks under the high moraine, the few rare plants, saxifrages, gentians and primulas, so well watered there, and a soft, familiar blueness in the air which even here may charm us. Though I bow to the goddesses I cannot forget at their feet a gentler spirit than theirs, a little shy perhaps, but constant in the changing winds and variable moods of mountains and always friendly.
Summit of Makalu.
The deviation from our intended line of approach involved by entering the Kama Valley was not one which we were likely to regret. In so far as our object was to follow up a glacier to the North Col we were now on the wrong side of a watershed. A spur of mountains continues Eastwards from the foot of Everest's North-east arête; these were on our right as we looked up the Kama Valley; the glacier of our quest must lie on the far side of them. But the pursuit of this glacier was not our sole object. We had also to examine both the East face and North-east arête of our mountain and determine the possibilities of attack on this side. A plan was now made to satisfy us in all ways. We chose as our objective a conspicuous snowy summit, Carpo-ri, on the watershed and apparently the second to the East from the foot of the North-east arête. Could we climb it we should not only see over into the valley North of us and up to Chang La itself, we hoped, but also examine, from the point most convenient for judging the steepness of its slopes, the whole of the Eastern side of Mount Everest.
On August 6 the Whymper tents were taken up, and a camp was made under a moraine at about 17,500 feet, where a stream flows quietly through a flat space before plunging steeply down into the valley. In this sheltered spot we bid defiance to the usual snowstorm of the afternoon; perhaps as night came on and snow was still falling we were vaguely disquieted, but we refused to believe in anything worse than the heavens' passing spite, and before we put out our candles the weather cleared. We went out into the keen air; it was a night of early moons. Mounting a little rise of stones and faintly crunching under our feet the granular atoms of fresh fallen snow we were already aware of some unusual loveliness in the moment and the scenes. We were not kept waiting for the supreme effects; the curtain was withdrawn. Rising from the bright mists Mount Everest above us was immanent, vast, incalculable—no fleeting apparition of elusive dream-form: nothing could have been more set and permanent, stedfast like Keats's star, “in lone splendour hung aloft the night,” a watcher of all the nights, diffusing, it seemed universally, an exalted radiance.