Douglas Freshfield.
About this time we were beginning to run short of provisions, though a month earlier we had ordered all sorts of luxuries—jams, Kashmir wine, and so forth—from Srinagar, and had heard that they had been despatched to Bandipur, to be forwarded thence by the Government Commissariat Department. All inquiries were, however, fruitless, but Bruce had promised that should he, on his way down country to Abbottabad, discover their whereabouts he would hurry them on. Eventually he found them reposing at Bandipur, so he at once packed them on ponies and sent them to our camp in the Rupal nullah, knowing how the Commissariat Department had to strain every nerve to get the requisite grain supplies for the troops over the passes to Gilgit before the bad weather set in and blocked the Burzil, and that private baggage and supplies might wait indefinitely till such time as it pleased the Department to find ponies to convey them to their destination. Personally we did not wish to leave the Diamirai nullah, but at the same time it was absolutely necessary that somehow we should replenish our vanishing stock of food. Already two of our Kashmir servants had been sent down into the Bunar district to bring up whatever they were able to collect, but we could not depend on the Chilas nullahs to yield us all we might want. This question of provisioning our camp caused perpetual worry. Unless one has trustworthy servants, every ten days or so one of the party has to start off to the nearest village for supplies. This may take a week or more, and as the period during which the big mountains are in a condition to climb is at the best but very limited, much valuable time will be wasted.
Bruce told me that whilst he was with Sir W. M. Conway, in the Karakorams, all the catering was left to Rahim Ali, his servant. If every fortnight during their stay at the head of the Baltoro glacier they had been forced, as we were, personally to forage and seek for dilatory servants, the climbing on Pioneer peak would have progressed but slowly. A piece of advice which cannot be too strongly urged upon those who go to the Himalaya is to get good servants at any cost, not to grudge the time spent, for it will be regained afterwards a hundredfold. The cook or khansammah ought to be the chief servant in the camp. He ought to be responsible for everything: it is his business to provide food, and a good cook who feeds one well, and takes the responsibility of the endless small details of management and supply off one's shoulders is worth five times the wages which are usually given.
Accordingly, after some consultation, Hastings generously agreed to sacrifice himself and trudge back to our camp in the Rupal nullah and thence to Astor, not only with the hope of bringing back with him all the luxuries we had weeks before ordered from Srinagar, but also with the intention of procuring sheep, flour, rice, and tea from Astor. At the same time he hoped to shorten to a great extent the journey to the Mazeno by making a new and direct pass over into the Lubar nullah immediately south of our camp. In the meantime Mummery and I were to stay behind in the Diamirai nullah and push provisions up the face of Nanga Parbat as fast as we could.
Just south of our camp rose a snow peak, about 19,000 feet, which we have called the Diamirai peak. On July 24, in crossing the pass from the Diamirai over to the Lubar glacier, we had left it on our right. It is not on the main ridge of Nanga Parbat, but on a side spur running to the westward. Camped as we were at its very foot, and looking on it as but a single day's climb, we determined to try to ascend it, whilst we waited for the snow to clear off the rocks on Nanga Parbat. By this time we had learned that the ascent of any peak 20,000 feet high was a laborious undertaking. At first we had talked about the 'twenty thousanders' somewhat contemptuously, and not without reason, for our hopes were fixed on Nanga Parbat, 26,629 feet; surely if a mountain of that height were possible, those whose summits were 7000 feet lower ought to be simplicity itself. In fact, we imagined that, as far as difficulty was concerned, they should stand somewhat in the same proportion to each other as an ascent of Mont Blanc to a climb up the Brévent from Chamounix during the springtime before all the snow has melted.
The Diamirai Peak from the Red Pass.