In all it may be said that one factor beyond all others is required for success. Too many chances are against the climbers; too many contingencies may turn against them. Anything like a breakdown of the transport will be fatal; soft snow on the mountain will be an impregnable defence; a big wind will send back the strongest; even so small a matter as a boot fitting a shade too tight may endanger one man's foot and involve the whole party in retreat. The climbers must have above all things, if they are to win through, good fortune, and the greatest good fortune of all for mountaineers, some constant spirit of kindness in Mount Everest itself, the forgetfulness for long enough of its more cruel moods; for we must remember that the highest of mountains is capable of severity, a severity so awful and so fatal that the wiser sort of men do well to think and tremble even on the threshold of their high endeavour. NATURAL HISTORY BY A. F. R. WOLLASTON CHAPTER XVIII AN EXCURSION TO NYENYAM AND LAPCHE KANG By a liberal interpretation of the expression "Mount Everest" we considered it necessary to explore the surrounding country as far as a hundred miles or more from the mountain, East, North and South; in all directions, that is, excepting toward the forbidden territory of Nepal. So it happened one day in July that Major Morshead and I, already nearly fifty miles from Everest, set out in a South-westerly direction, he anxious to add a few hundred square miles of new country to his map, and I intent on animals and plants. Our way lay across the Tingri Plain to Langkor, both names famous in the annals of Tibetan Buddhism. The following story was told us by an old monk in the monastery at Langkor:--