PRINCE OF ADVENTURERS.

Hastings Standard, Volume XIII, Issue 4204, 10 July 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

PRINCE OF ADVENTURERS.

The Dake of the Abruzzi, who has led a Kfe of thrilling travel and exploration, is shortly to make an attempt to scale Everest —a mountain rising nearly six miles above the eea.

The Duke of the Abruzzi has won fame in many ways. Most_ recently an engagement romance put his name into type in the world's newspapers; but as an explorer he cuts a more romantic figure. Passing much of his boyhood in the shadow of the Italian Alps, it is not so strange that the mountains should have lured him to ascend to the tops of the globe on which no man has stood before; but the title of the world's great<est adventurer may be richtly given him, since he has sailed the unknown seas as weli. Not a little of our knowledge of geography is due to his desire to search out the uttermost parts of the earth. Ever looking upward, soon came tue desire to go higher; but Luigi reached the age of twenty-one before he made his'first notable ascent of the famous Matterhorn bv the most difficult route, the Zmutt ridge. With him was Mummery, the Englishman, whom Sir Martin Conway calls one of the world s greatest alpinists. A GROUP OF BRA\E>. Then the eyes of this adventurer were turned toward the New World. St. Elias attracted him, and he determined to stand upon its summit. Then was organised a little group of adventurers who have pushed forward shoulder to shoulder not only on Alaska's slopes and glaciers, but over the creat icenack of the Arctic, as well as through the jungles of mid-Africa. Among them i 3 Cagni, son of the noted Italian General. One of the ablest < f Italy's mariners, he is also known as n scientist. Cagni may be called the chum of the Duke of the Abruzzi, since he has been an almost constant companion in his wanderings into the unknown. Victor Petigax, the veteran mountain guide and expert on glaciers, snow cornices, and cols, first gained fame on St. Elias, and has been with the Duke on nearly every important ex pedition since. Vittorio Sella, another member of this little band, is a mountaineer and noted photographer of the wild. When the would-be climbers of St. Elias landed on the shore of \ akutat Bay, to reach the snowy mountain top just visible on the horizon, they had to mako what alpinists call the longest ice climb in the wtrid; for the glacier-, covered slope of St. Elias reaches nearly to the sea, a distance of sixty miles, without a single tree or shrub on the white surface. Malaspina Glacier. with -its fifteen hundred square miles of ice, had to be crossed ; then the route was up the longest ice stream known to science. It was in Julj% yet this Alaska mid-summer weather included st ,rm;j snow waist deep through hic ! * they had to make their way. r '. rtaen cfcs were spent in going onlj eign? •n'tV' but, as the world knows, on thf last dav of Julv, 1397, human Velng., stc-..<d for the first time on top of tne mountain which is th>3 highest save one in X< rth America.

Next, we hear the shouts of the j > ople in the streets of Christiania as this royal explorer and his little band .:f - leagues passed by. It was in 1900, ;md Nansen was there leading the appl:ir.--e. The Duke and his just back from the Arctic wastes, iiliere they had planted Italy's flag rearer the North Pole than any other pioneers reaching, as they did, a place within tvo hundred and thirty miles of the coal. a record never equalled until Peary's" last vovage. THROUGH A MIST VEIL. A man who becomes a seeker of the unknown on the earth is usually a specialist, confining himself to climbing round the roof cf the world, perhaps burying himself far back in its deserts or forests or sailing on strange waters ; but this prince of adventurers has done all «f these and more, for the quest of the truth about the Mountains of the Moon combined a journey through the jungle into the heart of the Dark Continent and passing through the mist veil that has enshrouded this region in so much mystery. True, it was known that there were mountains; but no man could tell how many or of what altitude. Stanley. Stuhlmann, Sir Harry Johnston, and other explorers had penetrated to the foothlils. Some had ascended part of the "jiietance, only to bo turnfed back by "Natures whimsical mood, groping their way on tie return like blind men bec.n'i.f of the clcud curtain. Hardly had the Duke reached home on return from the Arctic before he itesna to think of this new field for eonand June of ISO 6 found him and his party at the foothills of Huwenzori. With Petiuax the ren-ie-l, ami found a plateau forded camping spot, althouj^^^^H mv«r€'J -vitii perj etual snow. i the supnl• es - or,* -if-- in -t .... In Mm day Abruzzi. . t-.i'i) Italian mountui l > cli-tance of fifteen miles ; .nd a Tittle mountain range consisting of five peaks, which were from eleven thousand to twelve thousand feet altitude. These, with the double peak of Ruwenzori itself, fcrmed the Mountains of the Moon, which Ptolemy wrote extended clear across Central Africa. SIX MILES HIGH. The Himalayas have challenged him since he first saw their snowy peaks, and it is net strange that he should* have decided to attack them again as he ■■proposes to do this year. But lie will be satisfied only with an attempt on Everest itself, which rises to a height of nearly six miles above the sea. So high is the summit of Everest that scientists have doubted if a human being could live to reach its top because of the intense told and rarefied air. But with Abruzzi will go the faithful I'eticax, Savoy, who has been with him bet ore in the Himalayas, and several of the Duke's friends, also skilled in mountaineering. Everything in the way of equipment that skill and experience suggest will ba provided, and if he fails rn hr attempt it will not be through lark ei pluck.