The situation of Camp III when we reached it early in the afternoon was not calculated to encourage me, though I suppose it might be found congenial by hardier men. We had turned the corner of the North Peak so that the steep slopes of its Eastern arm rose above us to North and West. Our tents were to be pitched on the stones that have rolled down these slopes on to the glacier, and just out of range of a stone fall from the rocks immediately above us. A shallow trough divided us from the main plateau of the glacier, and up this trough the wind was blowing; since the higher current was hurrying the clouds from the normal direction, North-west, we might presume that this local variation was habitual. But wind we could hardly expect to escape from one direction or another. A more important consideration, perhaps, for a mountain camp is the duration of sunshine. Here we should have the sun early, for to the East we looked across a wide snowy basin to the comparatively low mountains round about the Lhakpa La; but we should lose it early too, and we observed with dismay on this first afternoon that our camp was in shadow at 3.15 p.m. The water supply was conveniently near, running in a trough, and we might expect it to be unfrozen for several hours each day. [Illustration: SERACS, EAST RONGBUK GLACIER, ABOVE CAMP II. ] Whatever we might think of this place it was undoubtedly the best available. Very little energy remained among the party, most of whom had now reached 21,000 feet for the first time in their lives. However, a number soon set to work levelling the ground which we chose for two tents. It was necessary to do this work thoroughly, for, unlike the smooth, flat stones at Camp I, these, like those at Camp II, of which we had obtained sufficient experience during the previous night, were extremely sharp and uncomfortable to lie on. After it was done we sent down the main body of the porters, keeping only one man for cook and each the man specially attached to him as servant by Geoffrey Bruce’s command long ago in Darjeeling. With these we proceeded to order our camp. The tents were pitched, some sort of a cookhouse was constructed from the wealth of building material, and we also began to put up walls behind which we could lie in shelter to eat our meals. Perhaps the most important matter was the instruction of Pou, our cook, in the correct use of the Primus stove; with the purpose of giving him confidence a fine fountain of blazing paraffin was arranged and at once extinguished by opening the safety valve; for the conservation of our fuel supply we carefully showed him how the absolute alcohol must be used to warm the burner while paraffin and petrol were to be mixed for combustion. Fortunately his intelligence rose above those disagreeable agitations which attend the roaring or the failure to roar of Primus stoves, so that after these first explanations we had never again to begrime our hands with paraffin and soot.