These remarks apply equally to the outfit for the porters. Men who worked with so little experience, and took camps for us to a height of 25,500 feet, would, if correctly outfitted, take the camp 500 to 1,000 feet higher: of that I am quite convinced. An improved and lighter oxygen apparatus is under construction; when this has been completed I have every reason to believe that an oxygen depôt could be well established at 26,000 feet, thus allowing a full time for the attempt on the greater heights. This year there was always at the back of the oxygen-carriers’ minds a slight doubt that their oxygen might give out and that the consequences to them would be most unpleasant. Another problem that must always be borne in mind when one’s object is the assault of a great mountain in the Himalaya, is to bring one’s whole party there in first-class health and training. This sounds an unnecessary remark to have to make, but as a matter of fact the task is not as easy as it appears. The great danger lies in fatiguing and exhausting one’s party before the real test comes. This year there was great danger of our working the porters out, and this question gave me a good deal of anxiety. But they were all absolute gluttons for work, and I never would have believed that men could have carried out such tremendous hard labour in establishing our high camps and apparently continuing fit and well, showing no signs of staleness and quite ready to continue up the mountain. Before we left Darjeeling I forwarded to the Dalai Lama, on behalf of the Mount Everest Committee, a letter of thanks for all the assistance which he had given to our Expedition, and sent with it, for him and for the Tashilumpo Lama also, a silk banner on which was printed a coloured picture of the Potālā, the great palace of the Dalai Lamas in Lhasa. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE FIRST ATTEMPT By GEORGE LEIGH-MALLORY ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV THE PROBLEM I It is very natural that mountaineers, particularly if they are members of the Alpine Club, should wish success to the Everest Expedition; for in a sense it is their own adventure. And yet their sympathies must often wobble. It is not always an undiluted pleasure to hear of new ascents in the Alps, or even in Great Britain; for half the charm of climbing mountains is born in visions preceding this experience—visions of what is mysterious, remote, inaccessible.