[Illustration: BASE CAMP AND MOUNT EVEREST IN EVENING LIGHT. ] It is conceivable that this great mountain, though still unsubdued, may nevertheless have suffered some loss of reputation. It is the business of a mountain to be ferocious first, charming and smiling afterwards if it will. But it has been said already of this mountain that the way to the summit is not very terrible, it will present no technical difficulties of climbing. Has it not then, after all, a character unsuitably mild? Is it not a great cow among mountains? It cannot be denied that the projected route to the summit presents no slopes of terrible steepness. But we may easily underrate the difficulties even here. Though some of us have gazed earnestly at the final ridge and discussed at length the possibility of turning or of climbing direct certain prominent obstacles, no one has certainly determined that he may proceed there without being obliged to climb difficult places; and the snow slope which guards the very citadel will prove, one cannot doubt, as steep as one would wish to find the final slope of any great mountain. Again, the way to the North Col, that snow-saddle by which alone we may gain access to the North Ridge, has not always been simple; we know little enough still about its changing conditions, but evidently on too many days the snow will be dangerous there, and perhaps on many others the presence of bare ice may involve more labour than was required of us this year. But granted this one breach in the defence of Mount Everest, shall we only for that think of it as a mild mountain? How many mountains can be named in the Alps of which so small a part presents the hope of finding a way to the summit? Nowhere on the whole immense face of ice and rocks from the North-east ridge to Lhotse and the South-east ridge is the smallest chance for the mountaineer, and, leaving out all count of size, Mont Blanc even above the Brenva Glacier has no face so formidable as this; of the Southern side, which we know only from a few photographs and sketches, one thing is certain—that whoever reaches it will find there a terrific precipice of bare rock probably unequalled for steepness by any great mountain face in the Alps and immeasurably greater; the single glimpse obtained last year of the Western glacier and the slopes above it revealed one of the most awful and utterly forbidding scenes ever observed by men; how much more encouraging, and yet how utterly hopeless, is the familiar view from the Rongbuk Valley! Mount Everest, therefore, apart from its pre-eminence in bulk and height, is great and beautiful, marvellously built, majestic, terrible, a mountain made for reverence; and beneath its shining sides one must stand in awe and wonder. II