mount everest

Irish Jesuit Province

Mount EverestAuthor(s): ViatorSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 61, No. 722 (Aug., 1933), pp. 499-502Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513588 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 02:24

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Jesuit Province is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Irish Monthly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.118 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 02:24:48 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ijp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513588?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


499

MOUNT EVEREST.

By VIATOR.

1933 will be memorable for the Houston peep at Everest from above. But Everest stands unconquered, and that is my excuse for lifting up my eyes to the

mountain from a different point of view. Late one evening a party of eighteen set out to climb

the road to Darjeeling. Night came on-just such as R.L.S.'s Night Among the Pines-dark, still, chill. On our right the forest rose; glow-worm lights twinkled in the valley which stretched deep down on the left. A little Darjeeling Himalayan Railway engine, scant of breath, puffed past us and was lost in the windings. At ten o'clock we were approaching Sonada, where we halted in a tumbledown "v illa." Rats seemed annoyed at having to share the place with us. After two hours' rest, we made some tea, and took the road again at 1 a.m. The time was well suited to meditation, and soon we were in sight of the beacon lights of Ghum, its Buddhist Monastery wrapped in sleep. Ghum is the highest station oin the hills, whence the road slopes downwards to Darjeeling; so we turnied to the right to climb the steep path to Tiger Hill. Higher and higher we rose while the stars grew paler. On the top stood an inn where a group of Paharias were warming them selves noisily round a fire. We climbed the outer stairs on to the terrace-roof where we got the benefit of the smoke and noise that ascended the chimney. It was four o'clock-an hour before sunrise. That hour's wait ing in the biting wind helped to key us up to a pitch of tense expectation.

Dim in the distance the Mountain Range rose, its succession of peaks silhouetted against a cloudless sky. The outline gradually became sharper, more distinct; and slowly the height grew on us. Belloc remarks in one of his essays of travel that beyond a certain limit,

figures lose their meaning for our limited minds. Their



500 THE IRISH MONTHLY

value is merely analogical. Thus if I tell you that X is 5,000 feet high, you realise what that means; if I double that and make Y 10,000 feet high, it is still com prehensible; but when I find that Kinchinjunga and Everest rise to a height of 28,000 feet and more, my mind loses grasp, for beyond, say, 20,000 feet, it is a different world altogether where temperature and pres sure and vegetation are so utterly different from what I know that my idea of it is inadequate, even mislead' ing. So, too, for depths and temperatures: what can a land lubber make of a depth of five miles in the Pacific, or a South Indiain of a temperature of minus thirty degrees centigrade? So, too, in an infinitely higher degree when we apply human concepts to God of whom our knowledge is analogical; our concepts and comparisons break down. Such greatness is almost too great to be striking. A sky-scraper's greatness is strik ing and cheap, but real greatness in any line, in size, in intellect, in soul, is so gradual, so harmonious that it needs time to take in; God's greatness, in particular -infinite in extent and in comprehension-grows on you by contemplation. Oh, Beauty, ever ancient and ever new !

As we stood there gazing, silent, what an impression of unruffled serenity the mountains gave, and of unutterable peace not to be attained without much striving and struggling and slow painful climbing which had cost Mallory and Irving their lives-not by flights. Calm of mind, all passion spent-that is the goal of the Philosophers who imagined the Abode of the Immortals on Olympus, high above the pettinesses of human life, where the joys and sorrows which gladden and sadden poor mortals couJld not come near them.

And then the Unchangingness-the hills are eternal, participating in God's own everlastingness. What is a span -of life in comparison, how futile the hurry, the fever, and the fret ! It would seem that the unchang ing mountains have cast their shadow over the land

which stretches at their feet even to Cape Comorin and



MOUNT EVEREST 501

given it the dreaminess of the East. "Time caught up atnd clothed in Eternity," is Fr. Garrold's reflection.

4.45 a.m. A perfect Homeric picture of the Dawn. TJike a king, like a god, the Sun rose out of his bed and

(Irew the curtain from across the mountains. Before us loomed an array of peaks, ranges and spurs interspersed

with broad, grimy glaciers; Kinchinjunga, in all its gleaming whiteness was in front, while faxr away to the left stood the naked majesty of Everest, towering over all. Colld and dull grey darkness changed instantly to warmth and brilliance, the night's fatigue vanished'. The snows caught up and transformed the sun's rays, with a wealth and riot of colour as of a thousand prisms

flashing fhanes of light from ten thousand facets. No

single sa'Lvo of adjectives can touch that Vision of

Glory. As Colonel Blacker wrote on April 3: "O Our

minds were numbed by that stark vision of beauty."> Sunrise on the snow is as grace on the soul-the luminous, quiickening effect of Sanctifying grace on the soul of a new-born babe after Baptism, that makes it

a child of God and the wonder of the fteavenly court.

Is it any wonder that men have fallen in 'adoration

before the Sun, mistaking it for its maker ? Yet is it

no more tha:n a faint and broken reflection of its Source, an image through which we see God darkly as in a

glass. This scene, of ample p-ower to chasten and sub

due, is a lcsson i:n the Vanity of earthly things, of man

made things, and the glitter of tinsel and of pinchbeck

which ensnares so many hearts. Heaven only can be

grander than this, and higher; so must the soul rise from the creature to the Creator, Yasyaite Himavanto

mahatwam (whose glory these Himalayas declare), as the Hindus of old understood; and soar heavenward on

the wings of prayer. Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts know no rest till they rest in

Thee. LORD

In the glory of the Sun's Curtain

We praise Thee; In the eternal Snow-Fountain



502 THE IRISH MONTHLY

We revere Thee; In the might and majesty of the Mountain

We adore Thee.

The Rishis felt the call of the Mountains and hid them selves, "c The world forgetting, by the world forgot," in Himalayan caves, to give themselves up to contem plation. Contempplatio divinorum est Visio Principii. The Saints-a-Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, the Little Flower of Jesus-have ever seen God in the glories of Nature and them in Him; and the Poets too. For Nature is the Art of God.

Our pilgrimage is over, but the Vision endures, a tonic for the spirit. Walter de la Mare's picture is before me:

Still, and blanched, and cold and lone The icy hills far off from me

With frosty ulys overgrown Stand in their sculpturedl secrecy. No path of theirs the chamois fleet Treads with a nostril to the wind; O'er their ice-marbled, glaciers beat No wings of eagles in my mind. Yea, in my mind these mountains rise Their perils dyed with evening's rose; Anad still my ghost sits at my eyes And thirsts for their uintroubled snows.

I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whenee help shall come to me.

ACROSTIC.

Exult, ye faithful Christians now, After Calv'ry's tragic gloom, See ! your faith has proven how There is hope beyond the tomb! Even as with Christ, so we Resurrection all shall see.-Amen.

SEAN M. 0 CONCHuB3Ara,



mount everest

Documents