MEMBERS OF EXPEDITION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18711, 17 May 1924, Page 12

MEMBERS OF EXPEDITION.

SPLENDID COMBINATION.

LEADER'S HIGH QUALIFICATIONS.

For the third Mount Everest Expedition General Bruce has with him as his second-in-command Major E. F. Norton, together with Jir. . George Leigh-Mal-

- and Dr. T. Howard Somervell— t£be three who, two years ago, broke the world's record by climbing to a height of 26,985 ft. Ho has also, of the members of the last expedition, his cousin, Captain Geoffrey Bruce, as transport officer, and Captain J. B. Noel, once again the photographer and cinematographer of the party. Of these Mr. Mallory is the only one who was with Colonel Howard Bury in the reconnaissance expedition of 1921. To these have been added this year six fresh recruits, all of them skilled mountaineers. Mr. N. E. Odell, of the Imperial College of Science, acted . as geologist to the two Oxford Expeditions to Spitzbergen, and has had considerable experience in climbing. Mr. Bentley Beetham, now agricultural master at the North-Eastern County School, is a Fellow of the Zoological Society, an 3 was ornithologist in the 1911 expedition to the Arctic island of Jan Mayenland. In company with Dr. Somervell, he has climbed extensively in Switzerland, where last year they made the ascent of 55 ! peaks in 35 days, and, incidentally, tested the oxygen apparatus designed for the present expedition by carrying it over the Eiger. 'Mr. A. C. Irvine, of Shrewsbury and Merton College, Oxford, is another good climber. Two years ago he rowed two for Oxford in the University Boat Race, and was with Mr. Odell in the last Spitzbergen Expedition. Mr. J. de Hazard, like Mr. Beetham a North Country man, used to climb in the Alps as a boy before going to Leeds University, and since then, both in Switzerland and in the Lake Country, has done plenty of climbing. An engineer by profession, he joined the Royal Engineers in the war, in which he was wounded and decorated; he has recently been working on the North-West Frontier of India, and has travelled in Kashmir and Chitral. Major R. W. G. Hingston, the medical officer of the expedition, is another of the recruits whose work has taken him to the same part of the world. He was the medical officer attached to Captain Mason's Survey of India party, and is a well-known naturalist. Besides his two books on the natural history of India and of the Himalayas, he has written on the conditions of blood pressure in high altitudes. Mr. E. 0. Shebbeare, who is in the Indian Forest Service, was for many years in Sikkim, and speaks both Nepali and Tibetan. The Senior Members, Of the senior members, Major Norton, who will be in command of the higher camps, is, according to Sir Francis j Younghusband, a man of high who can be trusted to keep his head in an emergency, and a reliable mountaineer, famed for his pace uphill. This last characteristic, taken in conjunction with the fact that the average pace of himself, Mallory, and Somervell on the last stage of their magnificent climb in 1922 was about 400 ft. an hour, gives some faint idea of the extraordinary difficulties, purely on the ground of physical exhaustion, which have to bo faced at these great altitudes. Besides his ability as a climber, Major Norton, who was decorated with the D.S.O. and the Military cross in the war, is known as a keen soldier and a devoted follower of the sport of pig-sticking. He ha# a good knowledge of botany, a quick eye for the habits of birds, and knows how to paint them. Dr. Somervell, too, is a clever artist, and his love and knowledge of music enabled him to bring back from 'the last expedition a fascinating collection of Tibetan folk-tunes. Once a surgeon in a London hospital, he is now (when he is not climbing) a missionary, and an expert . mountaineer of fine physique and exuberant energy. Captain Bruce is an officer in a famous Gurkha regiment, ana therefore very much at home with the hill tribes of the Himalayas. In 1922 Captain Bruce, accompanied by Captain Finch (and, till the very last lap, by the Gurkha N.C.0., Lanee-Yaik Tejbir Bura), achieved the distinction, though he had practically no previous experience of snow mountains, of climbing, with the help of what the Sherpas how call "English air," to 27,200 feet, at present the greatest height ever reachcd by the foot of man. The Leader's Career. . With men like these at his command, General Bruce sets out' with good hopes that if the monsoon is kinder than it was in 1922— year it broke much later some of the band of climbers will this time reach the summit. His own climbing days— was born in 1866- i -are over, and in obedience to orders he must content himself with a modest altitude of 16,500 ft., and a temperature round about zero, in the base camp. On him especially the success of the expedition, whether the top of the mountain is reached or.not, must depend. His books, " Twenty Years in the Himalayas" and " Kulu and Lalioul,'' are the documentary evidence of his unrivalled knowledge of climbing in the Himalaya, to which, during his 35 years' service in India, he devoted most" of his leaves.' From the Hindu Kush eastwards, in Chitral and Gilgit, in the Garwhal and Kulu and Lalioul districts, and in Kashmir, on Nanga Parbat and the Karakorams, and at many I other places along the mighty range he has climbed alone and with Sir Francis Younghusband, Sir Martin Conway, Mr. Mummery, Professor Norman Collie, Dr. Longstaff, Mr. Mumm, and other great mountaineers, besides taking part, as a soldier, in various expeditions and campaigns! in Burmah, Hazara, Mir&psai, Waziristan, and Tirah. Froni Egypt and the Dardanelles, where he commanded the l/6th Gurkhas, and was severely wounded he returned to India in 1916. _ He is a man of unusual physical strength and fitness, which not even his three years command in the climate of Bannu was able to overcome. "So far as I know," writes Sir Francis Younghusband, " lie was the first man to propose a definite expedition to Everest" (that was in 18931, and the idea has never left him. When the Everest Committee of the Geographical Society and the Alpine Club decided to follow up Colonel Howard Bury work with a second attempt on the mountain, he was, says Sir Francis, the one obvious man for the position of leader. According to the same authority (anf there is none better) he is an expert climber, and knows the Himalaya conditions as no other man. . He loved his Gurkhas, and was beloved by them. He spoke their language, and knew all their customs and traditions. . .For organising this corps of porters, for dealing with the Tibetans, for keeping together the climbers from England, who were mostly quite unknown to each other, but who all knew of General Bruce and his mountaineering achievements in the Himalaya, General Bruce was* an ideal chief.