SEARCH AND TRAVEL IN THE CAUCASUS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 489, 16 July 1890, Page 6

SEARCH AND TRAVEL IN THE CAUCASUS.

By Mr Douglas W. Freshfield, R.G.S.

Everyone has heard of the sad disaster which overtook Messrs Donkin, Fox and two guides in their attempt to ascend Dychtau (16,923 feet), the only one of the great Caucasian peaks that remained unconquered in 1888. In 1889 an expedition consisting of Mr Douglas Fresh field, the honorary secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, Mr Clinton Dent, Captain Powell, and Mr Herman Woolley, afer an arduous search, discovered the last camp of the missing mountaineers. Mr Freshfield recently read a most graphic and interesting account of their experiences to the Geographical Society. The Search. We crossed (says Mr Freshfield) a halfopen fosse, kicked a few steps in the snow above it, and then grappled with the rocks. They were precipitous, and had to be climbed with hands and knees ; but they would not be reckoned difficult among men accustomed to Alpine work. That is to say, there was good handhold wherever footing was scanty. This was fortunate, for we could no.v sec that the snow on our left lay very loosely on hard ice, and a broad stream of water was flashing down its centre, so powerful are the rays of a Caucasian sun even at 13,000 feet. The crags beside the glacier having yielded us no traces, we felt that the next step was to go to the pass itself, wliero wo might look for a stoneman, and possibly a record. But we were fully occupied with the practical details of climbing, and in no immediate expectation of any discovery, when about noon the leader, at the rope’s end, suddenly stopped short. The Camp. Before our eyes rose a low wall of large loos,e stones built in the form of a semicircle with its convex side to,the precipice below, and enclosing a shelf on the face of the cliffs, some six feet across in either direction, and partially overhung and sheltered by a projecting cave of rock. In a moment vve were all overlooking the wall. The first object to catch my eyes was a black stewpan half-full of water, in which a metal drinking cup floated. A revolver in its case hung under tho rocks. The space inside the wall and between it and the overhanging crag was filled with snow and ice to a depth of several feet. The bardfrozen surface was broken hero and there by projecting portions of rucksacks and sleeping bags. The bags were not empty. A momentary shudder passed through more than one mind, * How arc they filled ?’ Bub a second glance showed us that there was no terrible discovery to be feared, terrible because it would have meant a lingering fate to our friends. Everything was there —most things at least—except themselves. That they were lost we had long known ; yet this sudden discovery of their personal belongings, just as they had left them eleven months before, the consciousness that we stood on their last halting place, sent a fresh thrill through every heart. Even in the common haunts of men familiar relics move us. How much more so when found in solitudes which have seen no previous human visitors except those whom they hide somewhere in their icy caverns ! Surrounded by so many memorials of tho missing, so many objects that spoke of individual traits of character and habit, it was difficult to believe in the catastrophe. It almost seemed natural to expect that our irionds might at any moment be seen coming quickly over the crags to regain the bivouac where all still lay exactly as when they quitted it for then’ lost climb. The bags were embedded in hard ice mixed with stones, against which our axes often rang ineffectually. The little camp hung, like an eagle's nest, on the edge of a cliff of about 1,000 feet. Any object, such as tho well-stocked meat-bag, thrown over its wall vertically for some fifty feet into the lesser snow gully, would then slide swiftly to the level snows far below. 14,000 Feet High.

14,000 feet high ! The many passes and heights of the central ridge of the Caucasus lay literally at our feet. We looked over them and past the clustered peaks and vast snow reservoirs of the Adai Choch group to innumerable indefinite distances, among which 1 recognised the horn of Shoda, green heights of Radsha, blue mountains of Achalzicb, opalescent Amenian ranges fading into a saffron sky on which hung far-off amber cloudlets which possibly marked the position of Ararat. All was distinct as a mapman’s model, yet wonderful and beautiful as a poet’s dream—as the landscapes of Shelley’s ‘ Prometheus.’ The splendour of nature on this day of days seemed nob out of harmony with the sadness of our personal errand. It affected the mind as a solemn and sympathetic music. While I gazed, four white butterflies fluttered about the little monument, and again fluttered off into immeasurable space. A Greek would have read a symbol in the incident.

Our eyes might wander for a moment, but our thoughts soon returned to our immediate errand. Sitting on the rocks beside the melancholy little stoneman, the story of the catastrophe seemed tc unfold itself. The mountaineers, all heavily laden, travellers as well as guides, had reached about noon the crest of the range at tho point where we stood. They had given up all thoughts of an attack on the great peak from the side of the Ul’nauz, and, following the suggestion made in my notes, and the intention so clearly expressed in Fox’s Diary, meant to go down to the Tubuin snow-field, and ‘climb Dychtau from the south side.’

The ledge was found, and the fatal decision made, The loads were laid down, and all went cheerfully to work. Fox doubtless set the guides to wall-building, and laboured bard at it himself; Donkin looked to the fire, adjusted his camera, made his boiling-point observations, unpacked nnd repacked some of his instruments, meeting tho occasion, after his manner, by nice adaptations of homely articles to purposes for which they were never intended. Thus we discovered some delicate instruments done up in the neatest possible parcel in a sock and glove, and all tied together with a bootlace. The red' flames of tho little fire (we found remnants of firewood) shone for a short time on the icicle-hung rocks, and then the mountaineers rolled themselves close together in their wraps.

The Eni>. Their start next morning was certainly not a hurried one. All loose objects were carefully stowed inside the sacks —except 3 revolver which was left hanging on the rocks. We may infer from their leaving it thus partially exposed that they saw little risk of bad weather before their return. They roped and started, Donkin as usual carrying his light camera on his own shoulders. They cut across the great trough. But here our evidence ends and conjecture begins. The fresh snow mentioned in Fox’s Diary may have added to the danger of shelves and ridges difficult at all times. Somewhere the snow slipped with them, or - but what use speculating how the end came? it is enough to know that it must

have been swift, common, painless ; that anything that falls on those cliffs falls iar, and that in all likelihood the blue ico-vaulb at the crags’ foot gave to the climbers an immediate and a sufficient tomb. The whole of the ground under the cliffs was carefully searched with strong glasses by us, and ten days later Mr Woolley and his guides passed twice along it in his successful ascent of Dychtau, when ho made certain that the peak had not been climbed—that the accident, therefore, happened on tho ascent, or in returning after an unsuccessful attempt.