THE CLIMBING JOY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15884, 3 April 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CLIMBING JOY.

NT FRANK MORTOtf. »HEN I was young—so young that it seems incredible to the old fellow I now am that 1 could ever have been so young a fellow at all— dearest dreams were - of i limbing high mountains. If 1 went to sleep with my head against my mother's knee, 1 was immediately soaring serenely I into ineffably remote airspaces. When j first 1 came upon a hill that I could dignify in my exultant fancy as. a mouni tain I was the happiest chap in any halfJ dozen counties. And yet that hill was i quite a little hill—Mow Cop, up there by the Cheshire border, with little stuffy, snuffy, fluffy, Congleton lying squat against its feet. In Wales I never got j properly into the region of the high mountains, my nearest approach to one being Great Orme's Head: which, after all, is nothing much. Nor did I see much of mountains, what time as <• mere youth I strove pitiably to become an engineer in j New South Wales. But in India the great heights were revealed to me, and 1 knew i that the joy ] had dreamed of in my ; childhood was truly the joy of joys. On j a mountain-top one is superbly aloof and remote from the sordid incidents and tendencies of every day, and there is a someI thing that appeals invincibly to tho vanity ! of man in standing on a great eminence and looking down on distant places in which the masses of humanity swarm and moil. The air, too : it is literally like wine: it stings and sings through the blood and marrow, so heartening a man I that he feels as if, with every promise of success, he could hit bullocks or assault close corporations. The big mountains in India are of an almost desperate or overI whelming grandeur. In their stupendous shadow a man is enabled to look honestly at himself and smile for his pitiable perI formances. That exercise shapens the inI telligence and softens the heart : it is I good. i As to the exercise of mountain-climb-j ing in the ordinary sense : well, that is j good. too. It is a fine thing to feel the. muscles bruise a little as they harden under the energising strain. I know ail about that, because I have done a lot of climbing in my time, though 1 have now reached the age at which a man is for ever announcing that he does not take exercise enough never takes any ii I he can avoid it. i Cliff-climbing is, on the whole, mors | i exciting than mountain-climbing, if only I because, as a rule, you must discover your j own tracks. On the mountains there are I fixed ways of going and coming. Even j on those Swiss mountains of whose break- ; neck perils the gentlemanly, modern ( novelists have 60 much to say, you do not I leave the appointed route, and you walk : in dangerous places tied to your guides like a ketch to a tug. But on the cliffs ! you may still originate and risk breaking ' your neck in a manner unquestionably j your own. You always have the dear ' satisfaction as you climb a cliff of thinking that you may be the first man that ever climbed, so few others being likely to be fools enough. I had a good deal of that sort of thing about North Head j in Sydney ever so many years ago, and I it makes me a trifle nervy nowadays to ; turn over mental pictures of some of the j places we used to visit. Truth to tell, there is seldom any great I risk either in mountain-climbing or cliffj climbing, so long as a man is steady and I sure of nerve. To climb safely you must always climb as coolly as if you had only 2ft to fall if you should happen to miss i your hold. The man who cannot walk : quietly along a bare plank on high scafI folding has no right to climb at all. I j stopped climbing some years ago. With ! a friend I had clambered down to the I foot of some cliffs round the coast a little I south of Dunedin, and on the climb back, a good way further along, we came to a very nasty perpendicular bit made of sandy rubble and sparse tufts of grass. To climb up one had to hold to the.'ie tufts, and about half-way up one of i them I tried came away in my hand. 1 Then for the first time in my life, not | fear (for one meets that early in one's ■days), but vertigo.' The cliff swayed out- | wards as 1 held it, the sea and the jagged I rocks at its edge swayed up, the whole world swayed. For a moment that had the duration of a small eternity I thought that I was done. With a dry sick qualm 'at my heart I saw myseli falling to a hideous samsh at the bottom. And then somehow I got a grip and went on. Hut now the climb that had been pleasant sport became a horror, every foot gained | seemed like a day's toilsome journey, j there was an increasing ominous shaki--1 ness. I thought of all things that ever ,1 did and of everything without pleasure; I and finally I topped the unstable wall and ' I somehow climbed over the edge. And i as I lay flat there and thought things out ' j I knew that I should never again do any i serious climbing. ' Till the first touch of vertigo comes to I make an end of everything, the feeling of I great height is the most exhilarating I thing in nature And yet. curiously enough, there are things that give one a I more vivid sense of the dizziness of , ! heights than any ordinary mountain- ; . rlimbine does. When I fir.'t saw a remarkahle cinematograph picture of daredevil fellows constructing a skyscraper in . j New York, 1 had thrills that I never > ! remember experiencing in India, or elsei ! where. And what a feeling of terrific i 1 mind-shaking height one can get ocea- • 'sionallv from the brilliant grotesqucries of i Mr. Heath Robinson! I ' Of the vertigo that comes to some 1 people from mere height, without any I 'element of danger. I understand nothing. I have a friend in Tasmania who will • • ;.icken if lie looks down a oOt't trarden--1 slope. That's not vertigo: it's a physical i defect, like mumps or a hare lip. Climb- . ers' vertigo does not come from looking f down, but from a realised knowledge that I a slip means death. So long as I know ■ I'm safe you can swing a hammock for • me on the top-gallant yard of a ship at • sea. and I'll read my book in comfort, i But if I thought that the hammock was • not securely slung, or that I could bv 1 any mischance tumble out of it—well, ,; then I should have vertigo. And that '' is precisely whv I cannot seriously pre- ' tend to be a climber any more. That is the tragedy of life: not death, hut the . ' sense of wealing out. Once that is real- . i-ed death becomes oddly attractive as . life'* crowning glory. Although, of course. . if one lan rise to the serener heights of ] a true philosophy neither the wearingout process nor death itself are more than incidental stages of whatever has , to be and cannot be avoided. That is an awkward sentence, hut you'll catch my drift. A man honestly regrets his youth, and just as honestly mourns G. think the 0 machine is breaking up: but all that is vnnitv. Vain are hopes, and vain regrets. J and sometimes it s*emn that only present jovs are real. But neither regrets nor fears need daunt the man who is still '[ the controller of his spirit. Unhappily 'j so few of us succeed in that. I know 4 , that my own opinion of my pwn acts is the h , only opinion that really matters to me: u I know that the man who stoor* meanly - to consider the consequence to himself ° of his neighbours' judgments of him is a _ mean fellow on the down-grade; but for " the life of me 1 can't help wondering g I what Brown guesses and what Smith 6 I thinks. It is not for. nothing, you see, (hat 1 regret mj mountain-togs,