St. Bernards Move to- the Himalayas

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 35, 11 February 1933, Page 16

St. Bernards Move to- the Himalayas

'"Help!" The cry is muffled by the curtain of snow falling on the pass."

Blinded, chilled to the marrow, exhausted, the lost traveller falls, rises, falls again.

"Help!" Now his feeble cry is like a whisper against the wind. The pass is about to claim one more victim, to add to the thousands it has claimed since man discovered it as a way to the sunny vales below.

A grotesque-looking form thrusts itself through the shroud of snow; the traveller feels a huge bulk pressed against him, something warm and wet touches his face. The St. Bernard rouses him, noses him up, barks, and the traveller, suddenly remembering, clutches at the flask hanging, at the dog's collar.

Instead of another victim for the pass, it is another resene recorded for the Augustine monks of the Great St. Bernard Hospice that has kept guard on, the Italian-Swiss frontier for nearly a thousand years. But. there isn't so much of this now,' foot. travellers are1 fewer, and, with time.heavy on their hands, the monks sought a new site for their • service. They have found it, and are establishing a new monastery in Tibet in the Himalayan highlands.. In. 1930 two of. their number, Canons Mellez and Coquos, after visiting Lhasa, the Buddhist sacred city, and obtaining permits, from the Grand Lama, explored the country for a site that promised opportunity to carry out a mission similar to that of their famous monastery in the Alps. They found this site on the southern boundary of Tibet in the Si-La Pass, 13,780 feet above sea-level and almost 6000 feet higher than their Swiss mountain hospice. Through this great break in the Himalayas pass thousands of pilgrims from India and the Far East to the Tibetan shrines and

thousands of traders from Central Asia to the plains of India. Here hundreds perish "from the snow ana cola each winter, and here the monks found opportunity to continue in Asia the lifesaving service they have for so many centuries carried on in Europe.

"There," says the London "Saturday Beview," "neither train nor motor will defend those who take the Si-La Pass from the fury of the elements, and the dogs, if only they can make friends with their opposite numbers in Tibetj bearing the flask of brandy on their collars, will find lost travellers to res^ cue."

Founded in 962 by St. Bernard de Menthon, the Great St. Bernard Hospice has made a :memorable record of lifesaving and of serviiie to humanity during its existence of almost a thousand years. Its work has" been modernised by the introduction of skis from Norway, and the more recent installation of the telephone. But ■ the fact remains that a good winter's snow is thirty feet deep on this pass, and that it buries the sturdy stone buildings up to the third story.

Many famous men' have found rest and hospitality in this Alpine monastery. A tablet on the wall of its great hall commemorates the stop of Napoleon when he crossed the ; Alps to invade Italy. A piano presented; by King Bd-| ward VII of England is in recognition of the hospitable treatment accorded him. Of especial interest is the memorial of Great Barry, the dog credited With saving forty human lives and killed by mistake while on one of his errands of mercy. j How many lives have been saved, 1 and how many people have been succoured by these Augustine monks will perhaps never be known. To inquiries' the monks always say that they "aided all they could and whenever they could." J